


PUSH IT

by gracefulally



Category: Adam Lambert (Musician), American Idol RPF, Kris Allen (Musician), Push (2009)
Genre: Alernate Universe - Special Powers, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Anal Play, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Breakout, Car Chase, Community: kradambigbang, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Guns, M/M, Sexual Content, Telekinesis, Telepathy, Undercover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-06
Updated: 2011-08-06
Packaged: 2017-10-22 07:30:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/235507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracefulally/pseuds/gracefulally
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kris is a Mover and Division Agent while Adam is a known Pusher and fugitive. When Kris and his new partner are tasked with catching Adam at all costs, Kris goes undercover. The case begins to unravel after a confrontation with Adam in which haunting new details are revealed. Ultimately, Kris must choose between glory and moral obligation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	PUSH IT

**Author's Note:**

> If you are unfamiliar with the PUSH universe of gifted individuals, check out the [Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_%282009_film%29#Types_of_Superhumans) about the movie and comic book series. However, I do include some exposition in the fic that explains their superhuman abilities and Division.
> 
> See the story end notes for credits.

The still­ness of the late night in the sub­urb­an neigh­bor­hood was broken by the sound of heavy boots pound­ing on pave­ment. Adam was run­ning hard and fast through the shad­ows as he dodged the glow of the street­lights at each corner. Two res­id­en­tial blocks passed by him in less than a minute. His breath­ing was labored and com­ing in rough drags while his pulse hit full tilt. Dressed in dark col­ors and thigh-high boots, his in­tent was not to take a mid­night jog. He was sprint­ing in ter­ror.

Adam was run­ning for his life. He was run­ning for his free­dom. And he had a reas­on.

As the son of the most ac­com­plished Push­er on re­cord, Adam had been tar­geted since his birth. He in­her­ited his moth­er’s abil­ity to push thoughts in­to the minds of oth­ers for ma­nip­u­lat­ive pur­poses. Di­vi­sion—a gov­ern­ment fun­ded net­work of as­sas­sins, spies, and re­search­ers—wanted Adam for ex­per­i­ment­a­tion that would test how strong he could be­come.

Adam’s moth­er had kept him well hid­den pri­or to her death when he was six­teen. Since then, he had tried to stick with her fi­nal plea for him to run. And he wasn’t alone. Shad­ows were an­oth­er sect of gif­ted in­di­vidu­als, ones who could dis­rupt the vis­ions of Di­vi­sion’s clair­voy­ants, and Adam tried to al­ways have one at his side—ex­cept for to­night. He’d neg­lected to bring along his Shad­ow and now, he was at risk.

After twelve years of vari­ous cap­tures, break­outs, and liv­ing with an ar­ray of Shad­ows, Adam had grown rest­less. He nev­er squat­ted in any giv­en mu­ni­cip­al­ity for longer than a year, and he had more ali­ases than he had fin­gers and toes. Di­vi­sion had re­sources scattered across the globe. They al­most al­ways found Adam be­fore he made his next move and he’d grown ac­cus­tomed to abandon­ing his home whenev­er Agents were spot­ted.

To­night, Adam’s own care­less­ness was to blame for Di­vi­sion’s pres­ence in this white col­lar sub­urb of Chica­go. Go­ing out for a walk without Matt, his room­mate and Shad­ow, was such a stu­pid thing to do. Gran­ted, he nev­er thought he’d be found and tar­geted so eas­ily in such a large city.

How had Di­vi­sion tracked him, this time? He didn’t know. There was no time for ques­tions and spe­cif­ics. All he could fo­cus on was run­ning.

_Run!_ Adam’s mind yelled at him as he made a quick turn in­to an al­ley and skid­ded, which kicked up a spray of pebbles. He frantic­ally grabbed and threw down everything with­in reach—mostly trash bags and cans—to trip up his pur­suers be­fore he took off run­ning again. Only a few more blocks lay between him and his cov­er.

Adam was so close to be­ing safe, but he wasn’t sure if he could make it there in time. Agents were trained in­filt­rat­ors and Adam was not in shape for all of this run­ning, dodging, and mak­ing snap judg­ments. He had oth­ers to help him avoid this type of de­tec­tion. Be­cause of that, Adam was re­duced to a scared little boy and he just wanted to make it to his new­est home and the tem­por­ary safety it offered.

A chill went up Adam’s spine when he heard the Agents knock­ing a path through the debris that he’d scattered in the al­ley. There were two voices, maybe three, and he knew at least one of them had a Taser. The bas­tard had nearly caught Adam at point-blank range while he was out for a walk un­der­neath the wan­ing moon. That’s how the chase had star­ted. Adam had man­aged a lengthy head start after ma­nip­u­lat­ing the Agent to shock him­self in­stead.

Two blocks were left and Adam was be­gin­ning to wheeze. His chest was aching for air. His legs felt numb and his jeans were chaf­ing his sens­it­ive skin. Run­ning for such a long dis­tance gave him a new per­spect­ive on the term “tun­nel vis­ion.” He didn’t dare turn back to look for his pur­suers. Those were seconds he couldn’t spare. There was a pos­sib­il­ity that this was three against one. He would be caught and knocked out be­fore he had the chance to push any thoughts in­to their minds.

As he roun­ded the next street, Adam felt a glim­mer of hope swell when the head­lights of his room­mate’s black Taur­us clicked on. Thank­fully, Matt had heeded Adam’s frantic phone call fol­low­ing the at­temp­ted Taser at­tack. The pas­sen­ger door was open and wait­ing for Adam when he got there.

“Go, go, go!” Adam shouted be­fore he was even in­side the vehicle. “They’re only, like, a block back.”

Matt, whose rumpled t-shirt and jeans made him look like he’d rolled out of bed just for this, im­me­di­ately threw the old sedan in­to re­verse and pulled away from the curb. Adam wobbled and nearly fell out of the car as he frantic­ally reached for the door. His fin­gers caught on the in­side handle and he yanked it closed. Matt shif­ted gears and the car lurched for­ward.

Breath­less, Adam col­lapsed back against the seat and wheezed for air as the car sped away from the three Agents who ap­peared in the rear view mir­ror. Adam looked over his shoulder to see two of the Agents pur­su­ing the car on foot. He laughed and turned for­ward, clos­ing his eyes as he sighed in re­lief.

There was no way the Agents could catch them, now. Or so he thought.

“Shit,” Matt said un­der his breath. “The pricks have guns.”

Adam’s eyes snapped open. “You’re sup­posed to be able to hide us,” he said earn­estly as he glanced out the rear win­dow.

“Not when they can see us firsthand, sweet­heart,” Matt said in agit­a­tion, though Adam could see the in­her­ent fear in his eyes. “You know I ain’t Houd­ini.”

Adam watched as the muzzles flashed in the night. Mul­tiple bul­lets hit the rear and sides of the car. Adam flinched and ducked after every _thunk_ as the rounds tore in­to the Taur­us. Each hit was a fright­en­ing and damning sound, but Adam knew they wer­en’t aim­ing for him. They wanted him alive. He wasn’t so sure about Matt. Adam’s Shad­ows were typ­ic­ally treated as fod­der and Matt was just one of many that had passed through his life.

When the first tire went out, Adam yelped as the car jerked. Matt muscled his way through the swerve be­fore punch­ing the gas.

“We’re fucked, aren’t we?” Adam asked as he slid down in his seat.

“Like a ten-dol­lar whore,” Matt replied through a clenched jaw. The car rocked when an­oth­er tire gave out. “We’re gonna have to bail, man.”

Adam looked up to Matt in alarm, but Matt kept his cool. “Seat belts,” he said as the car shook un­der his firm grip and sparks flew from the rims of the flat tires. Adam frantic­ally grabbed for his belt and snapped it on as Matt did the same.

With no more warn­ing, Matt made a pur­pose­ful hard turn, screeched around a corner, and plowed straight in­to the broad­side of a fancy Mer­cedes that was parked on the street. The ac­tion caused an ob­nox­ious amount of noise and de­struc­tion. Met­al crumpled, glass smashed, and Adam’s body snapped for­ward as they hit. Adam’s en­tire world was then ringing and there was an in­ex­plic­able fog in his eyes. His body’s ad­ren­aline kept the ache of the whip­lash and seat belt bruis­ing at bay.

Re­fo­cus­ing his dizzy head, Adam blinked and looked through the cracked wind­shield. Car alarms blared as porch lights flicked on. People were go­ing to no­tice them soon.

“Let’s go, dude,” Matt said with strain in his voice.

Know­ing that the Agents were still giv­ing chase, Adam scrambled out of the vehicle and hit the ground ready to run. He paused to gaze in awe at the snarled crash as Matt roun­ded the rear end of the de­mol­ished Taur­us. Matt grabbed the chest of Adam’s leath­er jack­et to yank him down in­to the shad­ow of a large SUV, which was parked be­hind the Mer­cedes.

“But they prob­ably saw us—” Adam star­ted to protest; the last thing he wanted to do was hunker down.

“Sh­hh,” Matt hissed. “They’re not go­ing to stick around when there’s wit­nesses and the cops are com­ing,” he ex­plained in a low, breathy tone. Con­cern fur­rowed his brow. “Are you hurt?”

Adam checked him­self over. “No, but I’m def­in­itely go­ing to be feel­ing it to­mor­row, you crazy fuck­er.”

Matt rolled his eyes and took the lead. “Keep low, keep mov­ing and _don’t_ let go.”

Adam did as he was told.

* * *

Rook­ie, probie, fresh meat, kid, baby face—all were nick­names that Kris heard as he walked in­to the of­fices of Di­vi­sion’s new branch in Chica­go. This was his first day as a full-fledged Agent and the rib­bing was ex­pec­ted. Kris just smiled in the face of it all. He was too giddy and grate­ful to sweat the small stuff.

Kris had made it through the train­ing pro­gram in At­lanta by the skin of his teeth. His par­ents didn’t re­veal their own gifts, which he shared, un­til he was nearly twenty-one. He’d been green as a flower bud when he star­ted at the Academy. Four long, gruel­ing years had passed be­fore he re­ceived the Agent title. Now, he could con­trol his abil­it­ies. He was also strong enough in mind, body, and soul to handle the job.

Be­ing as­signed to the Chica­go of­fice was a big move for Kris, but he knew that he was ex­pec­ted to go where he was needed and do so without ques­tion. He’d nev­er been so far North in the States. Everything was new to him and to be hon­est, he was okay with that feel­ing. Kris’ adult­hood dream was to be­come a Di­vi­sion Agent. This was just so dang ex­cit­ing.

Wear­ing a fit­ted black suit with a black tie and shined shoes, Kris sat op­pos­ite Chica­go Dir­ect­or Si­mon Fuller in the his of­fice. Kris watched as Dir­ect­or Fuller sifted through his Academy per­form­ance re­cord, which was con­tained in the file laid open on the cherry wood desk between them. Breath bated, Kris tried to keep his nerves in check. Fuller had a steely, in­tim­id­at­ing pres­ence and Kris didn’t want his first im­pres­sion to go awry. He wanted to avoid things like his stu­pid, child­ish fear of pee­ing in his pants due to nervous an­ti­cip­a­tion. That would be gross and un­pro­fes­sion­al, and Kris per­ished the thought as he gently bit down on the in­side of his lower lip. He rest­lessly worked the meat between his teeth un­til the Dir­ect­or fi­nally spoke.

“Brooke, get me Agent Cook,” Dir­ect­or Fuller said in­to a speak­er phone.

“Right away, sir,” the fa­mil­i­ar, chip­per voice of Dir­ect­or Fuller’s as­sist­ant re­spon­ded. Kris had met her while wait­ing for his ap­point­ment with the Dir­ect­or. Brooke was a smi­ley, young blond with per­fect teeth and skin. She ex­uded calmness and seemed nice, which had been enough to sup­press some of Kris’ anxi­ety. He ap­pre­ci­ated her for that reas­on.

The Dir­ect­or’s nerve-rack­ing gaze landed on Kris. “Agent Cook is one of our finest,” Fuller ex­plained as he sat back in his brown leath­er chair and tapped his fin­gers on the arm­rests. “Like you, he’s a Mover. He’s also a new trans­fer from the Los Angeles of­fice. We brought him here to work on a spe­cial case. I ex­pect you to show him re­spect as your im­me­di­ate su­per­i­or and part­ner.” His fin­gers stopped tap­ping. “Can you do that, Agent Al­len?”

_Spe­cial case. Agent Al­len._ Hear­ing the words out loud gave Kris goose-bumps.

“Ab­so­lutely,” Kris replied coolly as he rubbed his sud­denly sweaty palms over the thighs of his dress pants. “I look for­ward to meet­ing him.”

Kris didn’t have to wait long for Agent Cook to show. Hear­ing voices com­ing from out­side the of­fice, Kris glanced back over his shoulder. He could just barely make out a man on the oth­er side of the fogged glass door. Brooke let out a gor­geous, full laugh the second be­fore the door opened and a man popped his head in­side the room. There was a hint of a smirk on his un­shaven face.

“You wanted to see me?” the man asked in a gentle tone as he looked between Kris and Dir­ect­or Fuller.

“Yes,” Fuller replied curtly. “Agent Dav­id Cook, this is Agent Kris­toph­er Al­len. He’s your new part­ner.”

Kris in­stinct­ively stood to greet Agent Cook and sur­repti­tiously smoothed out the front of his suit and tie. As he ap­proached, Kris held out his hand for a shake. Cook, in turn, held out his fist. Kris snorted a soft chuckle be­fore bump­ing their fists to­geth­er.

Agent Cook’s scruffy ap­pear­ance took Kris by sur­prise. From the un­tamed hair on his head and face down to the much more taste­ful Birken­stock san­dals on his feet, Cook’s look was con­fus­ing. Abandon­ing the Di­vi­sion dress code, he wore jeans and a faded red t-shirt with sunglasses hooked on the neck­line. His stance read as cas­u­al, but there was sin­cer­ity in his eyes. Kris was per­plexed and had dif­fi­culty keep­ing the amazed look off of his face.

Cook scratched at his hairy chin as he gave Kris a curi­ous, once-over glance. “You haven’t told him any­thing, have you?” Cook asked as he looked past Kris to the Dir­ect­or with a know­ing tilt of his head.

Kris pulled his eyes away from Cook for a quick look to Fuller, who nod­ded slowly. “I haven’t dis­closed the de­tails of the case, Dav­id. I’m leav­ing that job and a tour of the of­fices up to you.”

Cook stared at Kris and the Dir­ect­or be­fore real­iz­a­tion over­came his thought­ful ex­pres­sion. “Oh, that’s my cue to get him out of here, huh?” He stepped back to put a hand on the door handle.

Fuller nod­ded. “I ex­pect a brief­ing from you and Al­len to­mor­row morn­ing on the Lam­bert case. I trust that you will edu­cate Al­len be­fore then.”

“I’ll catch him up. Don’t you worry,” Cook said in his warm, slightly raspy tone. He then smiled as he opened the door. After trad­ing curt nods of farewell with Fuller, Kris fol­lowed Cook out of the of­fice.

“You ready to get out of that suit?” Cook asked as soon as the door was closed.

Kris gave a part­ing smile to Brooke as he passed her desk be­fore he fell in­to step with Cook. “Yeah,” Kris replied with a short laugh. “I thought I was go­ing to have to wear this thing twenty-four/sev­en.”

“Nah,” Cook said with a shake of his head. “Didn’t he tell you? We’re spe­cial.”

“He didn’t ex­plain much,” Kris muttered as they neared the el­ev­at­ors at the end of the hall. “Does ‘spe­cial’ mean we don’t have to fol­low the dress code or something?”

Cook smiled like Kris was the most ad­or­able piece of fluff he’d ever seen. “You’re go­ing un­der­cov­er,” he said quietly as he jabbed the el­ev­at­or call but­ton. “With me.”

“Oh,” Kris said in real­iz­a­tion and his eyes boggled. “I nev­er thought…” he trailed off. He mo­ment­ar­ily lost his abil­ity to speak. New anxi­ety swelled with­in him as he tried to grasp the thought of be­ing an un­der­cov­er rook­ie.

“Well,” Kris puffed out, “I guess that does makes this a ‘spe­cial case.’”

“Ex­actly,” Cook replied as he res­ted against the wall op­pos­ite the el­ev­at­ors. He crossed his arms over his chest and lightly thumped the back of his head on the wall. “The case is spe­cial be­cause no one else has been able to com­plete ‘the mis­sion.’” He made air quotes for em­phas­is.

Kris mim­icked the air quotes when he replied, “So, what is ‘the mis­sion?’”

They were in­ter­rup­ted by an el­ev­at­or’s _ding!_ Seconds later, the doors opened on the el­ev­at­or to their right. A few col­leagues walked out of the car while Cook nod­ded in re­cog­ni­tion to each one.

“Well?” Kris prod­ded after he and Cook entered the empty el­ev­at­or, which was soon headed down to the build­ing’s park­ing gar­age.

“There’s a whole box of case files wait­ing for you in the back­seat of my car.”

“And I have to in­teg­rate my mind with them be­fore to­mor­row morn­ing,” Kris said in a thick South­ern drawl.

Cook snorted a laugh. “That’s the idea. Are you ready for this?”

“Let’s shake down some trees and bust some heads or whatever,” Kris replied with an am­bi­tious grin.

“Man,” Cook said with a shake of his head as the el­ev­at­or slowed, “and I thought _I_ was cheesy.”

* * *

“This is ser­i­ously all one file?” Kris asked as he hef­ted the two inches of case notes bound in an ex­pand­ing ma­nila folder by a large rub­ber band, which Kris was pluck­ing at ab­sently. The file sat in his lap, which was still clad in a pair of pressed black slacks. They were in Cook’s car and on their way to Kris’ new apart­ment in the city. Kris needed to change in­to something more cas­u­al.

Cook cracked a smile and nod­ded his head to­ward Kris’ lap. “That’s the moth­er-load of the case. Lam­bert’s the reas­on for the un­der­cov­er work. The rest of the files are just means to get to the mark.”

Kris nod­ded slowly as he con­sidered the grav­ity of what he was about to dig in­to. “How bad is he?”

“Eh,” Cook drew out with a slight frown. “It’s not so much how ‘bad’ he is,” he cla­ri­fied with fin­ger quotes on the steer­ing wheel. “It’s that Di­vi­sion wants him. They want to help him. He’s a danger to every­one that gets near him and has been for a long time.”

Kris pulled the rub­ber band off the file and flipped open the front cov­er. “Adam Lam­bert,” he pro­nounced slowly as he read the head­ing on the first page. Kris paused to think back; something was tick­ling his brain. The re­col­lec­tion was from his stud­ies at the Academy, but he couldn’t quite place the thought. “I think I’ve heard of him.”

“Of course, you have,” Cook in­ter­jec­ted. “It’s an em­bar­rass­ment that no one’s caught or been able to hold onto him.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Kris mouthed as a wave of real­iz­a­tion over­came him. “He’s the Push­er who’s es­caped, like, five times or something from the de­ten­tion fa­cil­it­ies, right?”

Cook nod­ded as he eased the black Im­pala around a turn. “That’s the gist.” He went mo­ment­ar­ily quiet as if he was think­ing over his next words. “But there’s some stuff in there that you don’t know. It’s pretty… Well, it’s scary how much this guy can do.”

Kris rolled his eyes. “You’re act­ing like he’s some kind of axe mur­der­er.”

“Well, he kind of is.”

“Huh?” Kris nearly dumped the file in­to the floor­board. He stead­ied the pile on his lap.

“Not an axe mur­der­er,” Cook amended with a shake of his head, “but he’s killed an Agent be­fore.”

Kris swal­lowed hard as that state­ment hit him. He didn’t pry for de­tails—he knew he would find out soon enough from the files. He was shocked, though. As a rook­ie, he ex­pec­ted noth­ing but desk work and me­di­al tasks, not chas­ing after a killer.

“I guess I’ll just shut up and read then,” he mumbled.

“Be my guest,” Cook said with a wave of his hand.

With keen in­terest, Kris began to thumb through the pages. There was ac­count after ac­count of Agents who had failed to cap­ture and de­tain Adam Lam­bert. Sur­pris­ingly, the in­cid­ents were not loc­al­ized. The re­ports had Lam­bert cris­scross­ing the na­tion over the past twelve or so years as he eluded Di­vi­sion, thanks to his Shad­ows.

The latest entry in Lam­bert’s file was from two nights pri­or. Di­vi­sion’s clair­voy­ants, bet­ter known as Sniffs, had picked up a trace of Adam from a used hair­brush and pin­pointed his loc­a­tion in the Chica­go sub­urbs. Agents had been sent to re­trieve him; they wer­en’t suc­cess­ful. The only new piece of in­form­a­tion that Di­vi­sion had gleaned from the en­counter was the iden­tity of Adam’s latest Shad­ow—Mat­thew Giraud, a washed-out mu­si­cian from Michigan. His name was re­gistered to the get­away car.

Kris then came across the file’s pic­tures. His page-turn­ing slowed and he de­cided that he really liked what he saw. Adam Lam­bert was cer­tainly a hand­some man. When Kris stopped on one par­tic­u­lar close-up of Lam­bert’s pro­file, a lop­sided smile began to twitch on his lips. From Lam­bert’s bright eyes to the con­fid­ent look on his beau­ti­fully cut fea­tures to the per­fec­tion of his care­fully man­aged eye­liner and inky black hair, Lam­bert was def­in­itely hot.

Kris didn’t real­ize how long he’d been ad­mir­ing the pho­tos un­til Cook chuckled.

“What?” Kris asked in­no­cently and closed the file.

Cook grinned and shook his head quickly. He was clearly happy about something. “I knew it,” Cook said like his team had just won some game that Kris didn’t even know that they were play­ing. “I knew he’d be your type.”

Kris’ smile fell and he scrubbed at the back of his neck. “I don’t know what you’re talk­ing about, man. I’d nev­er want to be with a _killer_.”

“No. I mean, I knew you’d be at­trac­ted to him. After read­ing up on your psych pro­file and know­ing his file cov­er-to-cov­er… He likes guys who are humble and a touch na­ive. You like guys who are caring and opin­ion­ated. He likes ac­cents and guys who are smal­ler than him. You like tall guys with dark hair. I just knew you’d be a match for each oth­er.”

“What if you hadn’t known?” Kris said quickly. He was sud­denly sus­pi­cious of Di­vi­sion’s in­ten­tions with his place­ment. “What if you were wrong?”

“Well,” Cook said with a frown, “then I’d be screwed and look­ing for an­oth­er part­ner.”

Kris’ ex­pres­sion was puzzled as he shif­ted in his seat to stare at Cook. “You mean I’m the bait?” he asked in sur­prise.

Cook nod­ded as he kept his eyes on the road. “You’re also a trained Agent,” he said, sound­ing as­sured that this was go­ing to work. “You’re per­fect for the job.”

Kris held his breath as he star­ted to feel over­whelmed with in­form­a­tion. Di­vi­sion had picked him to be Cook’s part­ner not for his tal­ent, but for his looks. It en­raged him a little, but at the same time, he had to re­mind him­self that _no one_ got an op­por­tun­ity like this when they were fresh out of the Academy.

“Still with me?” Cook asked, which stirred Kris out of his own thoughts.

“Yeah,” Kris said. He huffed out a sigh after de­cid­ing that he could be mad about this when he wasn’t on the job.

Kris dir­ec­ted Cook down a side street that was lined with cars. Kris sat up in his seat as they neared his build­ing. “So, what now?”

“Oh, we have big plans,” Cook said as he par­al­lel parked the car. Kris raised a du­bi­ous brow when Cook ad­ded, “Now, let’s go get you and your brain ready for to­night’s round of booze and boys.”

* * *

Adam hadn’t known Al­lis­on for long, but from what he could gath­er, she was just as stead­fastly anti-es­tab­lish­ment as he was, if not more-so. She was young and she had spunk—from her shock­ingly red hair to the leath­er out­fits she wore. No one would ever guess that she was only nine­teen. Al­lis­on was also a Watch­er. She could self-in­duce vis­ions of the fu­ture, but she was more like a for­tune tell­er than an all-know­ing seer. There was al­ways the pos­sib­il­ity that the dis­tant fu­ture could change and prove her vis­ion to be false. It happened more of­ten than most would think.

Adam and Matt had met Al­lis­on at a bar, where she worked, nearly two months pri­or. She was saucy, re­fresh­ing, and had a deep smoky voice of someone twice her age. Adam had loved her from the start. She had warned him that Agents were go­ing to find him, but Adam hadn’t listened and cited that she could be wrong. A week later, after he and Matt had got­ten in­to a fight, he’d gone out for that walk to clear his head, and now he was sleep­ing on Al­lis­on’s couch in her tiny one-bed­room apart­ment in Boystown.

Two days had passed. Nerves had calmed, scrapes and bruises were heal­ing, and Adam was sit­ting in the apart­ment’s liv­ing room with Matt and Al­lis­on as he in­sisted that they dis­cuss their next move.

“Well, I’m not gonna say it, Adam—” Al­lis­on began, but Matt was quick to cut her off.

“Hell, I’ll say it—she told you so. She told you so and you should’ve told me.”

“Can we not go there? Please?” Adam said with a shake of his head. “I know I was be­ing stu­pid.”

“Stu­pid, idi­ot­ic, rash, fool­hardy,” Matt ad­ded. “I can think of a few more, but she’ll hold me down and wash my mouth out if I say ‘em.”

“Matt—” Adam began to im­plore. Matt in­ter­rup­ted with a wave of his hand.

“Listen,” Matt said with a sigh and wiped his hand over his face. “I’m still here. I ain’t go­ing. Not yet any­way. You get me shot at, again…” he trailed off. “Dude, just don’t get my ass killed. That’s all I’m askin’ for.”

“Which I can prom­ise if we get out of Chica­go,” Adam said and felt as though he had been say­ing for the past twenty minutes. He was ex­as­per­ated. He wanted to get the hell out of this place.

Matt scoffed. “And what are we gonna do? Walk across Lake Michigan?”

“Don’t be ri­dicu­lous,” Adam said with a roll of his eyes.

“As mi­ra­cu­lous as that would be,” Matt said poin­tedly, “it’s about as fuck­ing likely as any­thing else we can cook up.”

“We _need_ to go,” Adam stressed.

“No, we need to lay low un­til we have an out.”

“We can rent a car! I don’t care if they can trace it.”

“Well, I do care!” Matt snapped. “I—We got _shot at,_ Adam! We got shot at! Do you real­ize how fuck­ing crazy that is?”

Adam threw out his hands. “Not as fuck­ing crazy as sit­ting around wait­ing to be shot at again!”

Matt stood up. “We are not rent­ing a car!” he yelled with a jab of his fin­ger.

“Yes, we are,” Adam said enun­ci­at­ing each word very clearly.

“Okay!” Al­lis­on shouted over them and put a hand in the air. “I think both of you need to calm the hell down be­fore my neigh­bors call the po­lice and we’re all fucked.”

Matt put his hands on his hips and sighed as Adam con­tin­ued to trade glares with him. Adam was frus­trated and angry that he wasn’t get­ting his way. Though, this wasn’t just about get­ting his way. He was also scared for his and his friends’ lives and the only op­tion he knew of was to get out of Chica­go.

Adam wanted to run. He needed to get out of here.

“If you won’t rent a car then we can steal one,” Adam huffed, which drew a hard look from Matt that wasn’t without due cause. “Look, I know it didn’t work last time,” Adam began with a quiet, earn­est plea in his voice for someone to agree with him, “but we could try again.”

Matt’s brow rose as he tensed up. “You really want to go there with this?” he asked skep­tic­ally. “I seem to re­call both of us al­most dy­ing in that scen­ario, too.”

“Adam,” Al­lis­on calmly in­ter­rup­ted, “let’s be real about this. Steal­ing a car would just make things worse. You know Di­vi­sion has an APB out at this point. You won’t even be able to book a damn train tick­et without them be­ing on your asses. Give it a few days, man. We’ll think of something.”

Adam looked between the two and he saw that he wasn’t go­ing to win this battle any­time soon.

“Fine,” Adam said flatly. He pushed a blanket off his lap and got to his feet. “We’ll wait.” He looked around for his boots. Find­ing them, he poin­ted to Matt. “Now, get your shoes. We’re go­ing out.” If he couldn’t get out of this city, he could at least get out of this damn apart­ment.

“What?” Matt and Al­lis­on said in uni­son as they traded wor­ried glances.

Adam scoffed. “If you think I’m stay­ing in­side on a Fri­day night in Boystown, you are fuck­ing mis­taken.”

* * *

The bar was hop­ping and Kris was a cheap date. This wasn’t due to the fact that Kris nev­er drank al­co­hol. He just didn’t drink very of­ten, nor did his body have the ex­tra mass to al­low him to pound oth­ers un­der the ta­ble. So, he kept it simple. One Rum and Coke was all he was al­low­ing him­self and he was drink­ing it slowly. Cook was get­ting a good chuckle as Kris took his tiny sips, but even Cook had told Kris to keep the drink­ing tamed to slightly buzzed levels. They were work­ing, after all.

“You know, I nev­er would have guessed this was a gay bar,” Kris said ab­sently as he stirred his drink.

“Oh?” Cook replied with a smile. “You missed the part where it’s full of men ogling each oth­er?”

Kris snorted. “No, I mean. It just looks like any neigh­bor­hood bar.”

“It is a neigh­bor­hood bar,” Cook said poin­tedly. “This is just a very gay neigh­bor­hood.”

“Isn’t it ste­reo­typ­ing and press­ing our luck to go look­ing for a gay guy in a gay bar in a gay neigh­bor­hood?” Kris asked with a frown.

Cook laughed. “That’s not the reas­on—well, not the only reas­on we’re here. There’s a _friend_ who lives around here.”

Kris’ face screwed up in con­fu­sion. “Huh?”

Cook dropped his voice and leaned in. “There’s a girl who works here and has been seen bud­dy­ing up with a couple of guys match­ing our boys’ de­scrip­tions. You read about her in the files earli­er.”

“Oh,” Kris said in real­iz­a­tion. “I guess I can’t be totally sur­prised by the size of the files now since it picked up on the friends too.

Cook pulled back and sipped his beer, which he smoothly put down without ac­tu­ally tak­ing a drink. “Heads up, Kris,” he said un­der his breath.

Kris im­me­di­ately glanced to­ward the door in time to see Adam and Mat­thew mak­ing their way through the crowd. Startled, Kris’ hand hung in mid-air, above his drink, as his mouth fell open. They were ac­tu­ally here. Cook and the re­search were good.

“Easy,” Cook said, nudging Kris on the shoulder. “You look star-struck. Hint: you don’t want to look star-struck.”

Kris lowered his hand and took a breath. He tried not to feel em­bar­rassed, but he felt a blush creep­ing up his neck any­way likely due, in part, to the booze. “What do we do?” he asked quietly.

Cook grinned warmly and slowly shook his head. “One look at him and you for­get all of your train­ing? That’s a little pathet­ic, Kris.”

Okay, now he was _really_ blush­ing. “Shut up,” Kris mumbled un­der his breath be­fore tak­ing a sip of his drink.

The plan was quickly laid out. They needed to wait for Adam to get loosened up be­fore send­ing Kris to­ward him. Go­ing for him right away would just look sus­pi­cious and the last thing they needed was a sus­pi­cious Push­er in a bar full of in­no­cents. Still, it was ex­haust­ing to just sit there, wait and not get dis­trac­ted by the couple of guys who tried to pick him up. Cook got some at­ten­tion, too, much to his amuse­ment.

In­ev­it­ably, Kris needed to use the bath­room. He was quickly up and find­ing his mildly buzzed foot­ing be­fore head­ing off in search of a ur­in­al. Kris knew this was also an op­por­tun­ity to check-up on Adam and his eyes searched the crowd as he went.

Kris glanced slowly across the bar un­til he found Adam, who had some­how com­mand­eered a booth for him and Mat­thew, only to dis­cov­er that Adam was already look­ing him over. Fleet­ing but­ter­flies were in Kris’ stom­ach; it felt good to be wanted, even by a crim­in­al. Gran­ted, Adam was a hand­some crim­in­al and the way he was star­ing was not subtle at all. Kris paused out­side of the bath­rooms to look at Adam dead-on and give him a little smirk, which Adam re­turned.

Maybe this would be easi­er than Kris had thought.

* * *

Adam didn’t know what it was about the guy that ini­tially caught his eye. The fluffy hair, the short but built stature, the sweet smile and warm brown eyes—all were vy­ing for Adam’s at­ten­tion. Since it was early in the even­ing, Adam hadn’t ex­pec­ted to spot any­one worth his time. Still, with the way the guy had stared at him be­fore dis­ap­pear­ing in­to the bath­room, this was an en­counter that at least war­ran­ted a drink pro­pos­i­tion, right? He thought so. Matt agreed.

When the guy showed his face, again, he was slowly roam­ing the crowd and seemed to be mak­ing his way to­ward Adam. That fact made Adam’s stom­ach do a little anxious flip.

Adam stood up and looked to Matt. “I’m go­ing for it,” he an­nounced.

“Get him ti­ger,” Matt replied with a wave of his hand.

Adam took a few steps in the young­er man’s dir­ec­tion. The ges­ture caught the stranger’s at­ten­tion and got a smile, which Adam re­turned. For­cing him­self to walk slowly in­stead of bolt­ing to­ward the guy, Adam breathed in deeply to calm him­self.

“You have a star­ing prob­lem,” Adam said as soon as he thought the guy was in earshot.

“What?”

_Oh._ The man’s voice was a sweet drawl. Adam was en­joy­ing this guy already.

“Why are you star­ing at me?” Adam asked. He re­ceived a lop­sided grin that he wanted to kiss off the stranger’s face.

“Be­cause you’re hot,” the guy said coolly.

Adam tried not to let on how happy that sen­tence made him. “Mmm,” he mur­mured as he moved closer. “What’s your name?”

“Why do you want to know?”

The coy at­ti­tude thrilled Adam. “I need something to refer to you as oth­er than ‘the sexy south­ern boy,’” he shot back.

Adam got a smirk and a name. “Kris.”

For a fleet­ing mo­ment Adam con­sidered us­ing a fake name. He knew Matt would in­sist that he use a fake. Adam wasn’t very happy with Matt at the mo­ment, though.

“I’m Adam.”

“Hi, Adam,” Kris said and nod­ded to­ward the bar. “Can I get you a drink or something?”

Ha. _Or something?_ ‘Or something’ was def­in­itely on Adam’s mind.

Adam pressed his lips to­geth­er thought­fully be­fore smirk­ing. “I think we should get out of here,” he said and traded toy­ing stares with Kris. He was already hav­ing thoughts of what it would feel like to have that lean body pressed against his.

Kris wet his lower lip, his plump and beg­ging-to-be-bit­ten lower lip, and raised his brow. “Get out of here?” Kris echoed.

Adam couldn’t tell if he was about to get laughed at or not. He hoped the lat­ter. He wanted to take this Kris back to Al­lis­on’s. He _needed_ to de-stress. Hell, he’d push Kris’ mind if he had to.

But only if he had to.

“Well, I don’t have a tab,” Kris mumbled be­fore scrub­bing the back of his neck. “So, I guess I can go whenev­er.” His face broke in­to a slow smile.

“With me?” Adam promp­ted with a sug­gest­ive raise of one care­fully tamed eye­brow. His pulse was echo­ing in the back of his throat. He hated try­ing to pick up guys. It was so nerve-rack­ing.

“Def­in­itely.”

Adam sensed no hes­it­a­tion in the reply as Kris stepped closer. So Adam did what had been run­ning through his mind for the last few minutes; he leaned in to cop a feel. “You’re sure?” Adam said in a hot whis­per against Kris’ ear as he let a hand wander to grip the swell of Kris’ ass. “I want you.”

Kris’ eyes went mo­ment­ar­ily heavy. He clapped Adam on the neck with a rough hand and pushed him­self up on his toes to whis­per back, “I thought we were get­ting out of here.” His lips brushed Adam’s ear as he spoke and Adam’s mouth went dry.

“Yes, yes we are,” Adam said be­fore re­luct­antly pulling away to flag down Matt, who was still sit­ting at their ta­ble and watch­ing the flirt­ing in amuse­ment.

Adam rolled his eyes at Matt, who smirked on the short walk over to them. “This is my ex­tremely straight room­mate, Matt,” Adam an­nounced as he turned back to Kris.

Matt shot an in­tently dis­pleased look at Adam be­fore turn­ing to hold out a hand to Kris. “I shake hands, not asses,” Matt said, which again, made Adam roll his eyes.

“That so?” Kris said as he took Matt’s hand for a shake. “Kris.”

“Cool,” Matt replied be­fore he was already headed for the door.

Adam shook his head. “He’s sweeter than he looks,” he told Kris.

“Most are,” Kris said be­fore start­ing after Matt. “You com­ing?”

“I’m not go­ing to be the only one com­ing if you play your cards right,” Adam dead­panned and struggled to not cringe at the corni­ness of what he’d said.

Thank­fully, Kris snorted, which caused Adam to snick­er, which sent them both in­to a small fit of laughter be­fore they left the bar. Adam was con­tent and all smiles as they walked. This was shap­ing up to be a good night.

* * *

Cook gave Kris a little over fif­teen minutes for his bath­room break. He was sym­path­et­ic about most things, but not even his moth­er took that long in the re­stroom. Cook slipped off his stool and began his subtle search as he roamed the bar. First, he looked for Kris in the grow­ing crowd and then, he checked the re­stroom it­self. Kris was nowhere to be found. Per­plexed, Cook re­turned to the main floor and scanned the milling bar pat­rons for an­oth­er minute or so be­fore de­cid­ing that he’d been pay­ing too much at­ten­tion to his beer. He was go­ing to get an ear­ful when he had to tell Dir­ect­or Fuller that he’d lost the new kid on the first day. Though, he no­ticed that Lam­bert and his Shad­ow wer­en’t any­where to be found either.

Maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t as bad of a situ­ation as he thought.

Cook pulled out his cell phone and headed out of the bar. While on the side­walk, he glanced up and down the slightly bust­ling block. There was no Kris Al­len to be seen.

Frown­ing, Cook went back to his cell phone and thumbed around for Kris’ num­ber. Cook put the phone to his ear and waited. Rings came and went un­til Kris’ voice mail picked up. Dis­ap­poin­ted, Cook closed the phone and con­sidered call­ing headquar­ters to start a trace on Kris’ phone. He didn’t like the idea of Kris be­ing out there without sup­port at the ready.

There was a sud­den buzz­ing in Cook’s hand, which signaled that he had a mes­sage of some sort. Open­ing the phone, Cook saw that he had a text mes­sage from Kris.

_Got a date. Don’t wait up._

Cook smiled at the mes­sage. He was ac­tu­ally im­pressed with Kris’ abil­ity to handle the rushed plans to bring Lam­bert in­to Di­vi­sion. Fuller had been skep­tic­al about this even work­ing and while Cook had asked for Kris spe­cific­ally, he hadn’t ex­pec­ted things to go this well either. This was Kris’ first time in the field, after all. Cook sup­posed he needed to give Kris a little more cred­it as an Agent. Kris wasn’t a lost puppy; he was trained and he _could_ take care of him­self.

Chuck­ling, Cook punched a dif­fer­ent num­ber in­to the phone and raised it to his ear. He ducked around the side of the bar and stared at his feet. He didn’t want to call at­ten­tion to him­self. When the oth­er line picked up, he didn’t wait for an an­swer be­cause he knew one wasn’t com­ing.

“This is Cook,” he said calmly. “I need to make a re­port to Dir­ect­or Fuller.”

* * *

Kris found him­self led to an apart­ment that was sev­er­al blocks away from the bar. The apart­ment was small and on an up­per floor, which would make it dif­fi­cult for an ex­trac­tion team to get in­to. Gran­ted, he didn’t want to call in the troops—not just yet. He knew he needed to dis­tract Adam un­til Di­vi­sion traced his loc­a­tion and sent a team, but that wasn’t the only plan on Kris’ mind. Maybe it was just the booze, maybe it was some real at­trac­tion, but something made Kris want to spend a little time get­ting to know Adam. He knew that would eat up some time. Plus, Adam didn’t seem to sus­pect a thing. Kris had this in the bag.

“This isn’t my place,” Adam said as took a seat on a dumpy couch and began pulling off his boots. “Just so you know.”

Kris nod­ded as he toed off his shoes. “Is it his?” he asked, nod­ding his head to­ward the room where Matt had gone after they all ar­rived to­geth­er.

Adam shook his head. “No.”

Kris raised a brow as he crossed the room to straddle Adam’s lap, the springs of the couch squeak­ing be­neath them. “Are you just squat­ting in someone’s place?”

Adam’s eye­lids went heavy. He tent­at­ively put his hands on the backs of Kris’ knees. “No,” he said with a grin, which widened when Kris frowned in con­fu­sion.

“Well, are they gonna care that we use the couch?”

“No,” Adam replied, lips be­gin­ning to twist in­to a smirk.

Kris cupped Adam’s face and grinned. As he caught Adam’s lips for a soft kiss, he felt a pulse ham­mer­ing in Adam’s neck, be­neath his fin­ger­tips. Kris smirked and kissed Adam again. His breath hitched as the kiss deepened and Adam’s hands hes­it­antly climbed the out­sides of his thighs. Kris forced him­self to re­lax in­to the kiss and let his guard down just a bit. Lazily, he pulled at Adam’s lower lip.

“Damn,” Adam said in amazement as they pulled back to breathe. “You are rock hard all over,” he ad­ded as he squeezed the butt of Kris’ jeans.

Kris sucked at his own lower lip and shook his ass. “Hard enough to get you hard?” he asked shame­lessly, with a tilt of his head.

Adam stared and then laughed warmly. “Hell yes.”

Kris grinned and sat down in Adam’s hands. Wrap­ping his arms around Adam’s neck, Kris began to wiggle a dance on Adam’s lap. Hips rocked, belts caught, and there was a whole lot of fric­tion. Kris quickly had Adam swear­ing un­der his breath as he pulled at the back of Kris’ shirt.

It was kind of ex­cit­ing to have a crim­in­al, your mark, writh­ing some­what help­lessly be­neath you, like he just couldn’t get enough.

Kris dipped his head for an­oth­er rough kiss as his hands worked to un­but­ton his thin dress shirt. He mur­mured a groan against Adam’s lips as Adam’s hands eagerly spread across his bare chest and down his sides, grop­ing at the taunt flesh. Kris con­tin­ued to rock and swiv­el his hips while Adam’s fin­gers curled against Kris’ toned back as he broke their kiss and messily brushed his mouth along Adam’s jaw.

“We don’t have to have sex,” Kris bluntly breathed over Adam’s ear.

Adam let out a high reach­ing chuckle. “Oh fuck, please, can we?”

Kris snickered. Those words had slipped out of his mouth be­fore he could stop him­self, but really? He agreed with Adam’s de­sire to keep go­ing. He knew the point was to keep Adam dis­trac­ted and off-guard, but he also wanted to mess around and see how far Adam would go with him. Screw the job; it could wait. But at the back of his mind, Kris had to won­der: was his mind be­ing pushed, right now or was all of this just be­cause Adam wanted him? Kris was lean­ing to­ward the lat­ter. He’d been won­der­ing how Adam would re­act to him ever since Cook had de­clared them each oth­er’s type, and this was def­in­itely a Kris-ap­proved re­sponse.

Kris pushed his hips for­ward. “You sure your—uh—friend won’t mind us hav­ing sex on their couch?”

Adam smiled. “I say shoot first, ask ques­tions later.” He feathered a hand through Kris’ hair. “Mmm, much later.”

“Do you have—” Kris began, but Adam cut him off with a kiss. Kris mumbled in­co­her­ently be­fore re­peat­ing in a lower tone, “Do you have a con­dom?”

Adam was already work­ing on slid­ing a wal­let out of his pock­et. Seconds later he was hold­ing up a pack­age between two fin­gers. Kris grinned and Adam re­turned the smile as Kris fell in­to a hot and heavy kiss that took away his breath. He pulled kiss after kiss out of Adam as he worked to get Adam’s jeans open.

Adam’s hand wandered down the back of Kris’ jeans to pinch his ass. Kris hissed and Adam smirked un­til Kris began nib­bling on his neck. Adam drew a sharp breath and his hand moved to un­zip Kris’ jeans and palm Kris’ crotch. Kris arched in­to Adam’s touch be­fore they were both tug­ging and push­ing jeans and un­der­wear down.

“ _Oh,_ ” Kris softly gasped in sur­prise when he real­ized Adam was a two-hander. Adam smiled shyly and that made Kris go for an­oth­er kiss, this one was hard and lip-smash­ing. “Yes,” Kris whispered elatedly in­to Adam’s mouth as he pumped his hand.

Kris then let out a sharp moan as Adam’s fin­gers stretched be­neath him to trace his open­ing. Press­ing their fore­heads to­geth­er, Kris’ mouth dropped open as he watched his hand stall on Adam’s cock. He went for the con­dom and ripped open the pack­age. Adam mur­mured as Kris helped him roll it over his over his length.

Prof­fer­ing an­oth­er foil pack­et, Adam tore off a corner and poured a clear flu­id in­to his hand. Kris panted as Adam mas­saged him open and prepped him with the lube. After suck­ing on his own fin­gers and mov­ing them to join Adam’s hand, Kris felt the heat of his own body as he helped Adam work his hole loose.

“Kris,” Adam groaned with need. Kris answered by grabbing Adam’s erect cock and slick­ing the con­dom with some of the ex­cess lube as he lined him­self up. He then dipped his ass and pushed down against Adam’s cock un­til the head was nestled fully in­side of him. Kris let out a deep breath of re­lief as he slowly lowered him­self onto Adam, who was paw­ing at his hips to hold him close. Kris rose back up and read­ied him­self by tight­en­ing and loosen­ing his ass un­til he was com­fort­able.

“What?” Adam com­plained when Kris hissed a shush­ing noise after Adam loudly moaned in re­sponse.

Kris licked his lips and leaned down for a kiss as he began to ride Adam, whose ini­tial thrusts came in stut­ters. “You’re gonna make him jeal­ous,” Kris said quietly and nod­ded off to­ward where Matt had gone be­fore let­ting out a hitched moan of his own.

Adam sputtered as he gained some con­trol over him­self. He gripped Kris’ waist as he rolled his hips up off of the couch and pushed deep­er in­to Kris. “He doesn’t care,” Adam said dis­missively between pants. He then threw his head back against the couch. “Fuck, you’re beau­ti­ful.”

“I could say the same,” Kris breath­lessly replied as his hands gripped the back of the couch for lever­age on his san­ity. Adam was mak­ing it im­possible to keep quiet.

Adam let out a groan mingled with a laugh. “You would if you saw me tak­ing it fast and moan­ing like you are. Mmm,” he muttered in mild amuse­ment.

They both grinned when Kris rumbled, “Maybe later, gor­geous,” be­fore turn­ing his gaze down­ward to fo­cus on keep­ing his move­ments in time with Adam’s rolling hips.

Though Adam was a little lar­ger than he was used to, Kris felt his body heat­ing up quickly. There was some vague pain, but noth­ing Kris couldn’t handle. Wave after wave of hot want rolled through Kris and a loud, but pleased noise es­caped as Adam’s long fin­gers wrapped his cock and worked it over.

Be­sides the pleas­ure, though, Kris began to have fleet­ing guilty thoughts. Rid­ing Adam was some­how both a dream and a fore­bod­ing re­mind­er that this was simply meant to be a di­ver­sion in an over­arch­ing plan of cap­ture. The fact that Kris was be­ing lulled in­to the be­lief that Adam cared about him was not help­ing the guilt pangs. Kris had nev­er felt this much at­ten­tion paid to his body. Adam’s hands were roam­ing and grasp­ing as he whispered cheesy com­pli­ments to Kris un­til Kris couldn’t handle any­more flat­tery.

Kris’ boun­cing mo­ment­ar­ily stalled as he dipped for­ward to tuck his face against Adam’s neck. “You feel so good,” he panted against sweaty flesh. Kris’ grin broadened when he felt Adam smile against his cheek be­fore giv­ing it a soft kiss.

“Are you go­ing to come for me?” Adam whispered.

Nod­ding, Kris rose back up and tossed his head back in aban­don. Kris’ mouth hung agape as he closed his eyes and moved quickly on Adam’s lap. Adam’s hand sped up to keep up with Kris’ bounces. It was only a mat­ter of time be­fore they’d each hit their peak.

Kris moaned loudly as a spasm of heat and pleas­ure surged through his body. He began to come and his eyes fluttered open in a daze as he poured out in­to Adam’s hand. Tee­ter­ing, Kris gripped Adam’s shoulders and locked their in­tense gazes, rid­ing the thrusts un­til Adam gave a stuttered groan in his own cli­max.

Breath­ing hard, Kris pitched for­ward and res­ted his face to the couch just bey­ond Adam’s shoulder. His ass slowly lowered, still hold­ing Adam in­side.

“Fuck,” Adam panted.

“I know,” Kris replied, just as drained.

Adam’s hands slipped over Kris’ chest, around his back and held him close. “You all right, babe?” Adam asked in a calm, sweet tone.

Kris felt a sink­ing rock of guilt in his stom­ach when he muttered, “Nev­er been bet­ter.”

* * *

The te­di­ous part to sex on the couch was the clean-up. Still racked with guilt, Kris watched and softly moaned as Adam licked him cleaned. The rest was taken to task with a hand tow­el be­fore they both dressed.

Adam fu­tilely wiped at a stain on the couch as Kris at­temp­ted to col­lect him­self, and jus­ti­fy what he’d done. Not only had he had sex with his mark, but he was ly­ing to this guy that he kind of liked. It made him feel aw­ful. Maybe this is why they shouldn’t let the rook­ies go alone? He wasn’t even sure if he should tell Cook how he’d dis­trac­ted Adam, and there was no way he was telling Fuller.

Kris con­sidered just leav­ing Adam without so much as an ex­plan­a­tion. He needed to clear his head and he wasn’t sure he wanted to be around when the ex­trac­tion team showed up. Kris doubted he could handle a look of be­tray­al on Adam’s beau­ti­ful face, which was so happy at the mo­ment.

“I wish you could stay for the night,” Adam was say­ing when sud­denly, Kris over­heard sounds in the hall­way. “But all I have is the couch.”

Kris froze, pan­icked that the planned trace on his phone was suc­cess­ful and a Di­vi­sion team was about to bust down the door. They were sup­posed to be wait­ing for Kris’ sig­nal, but Kris wouldn’t put it past them to forgo that part of the plan. They wanted Adam, badly.

Swal­low­ing thickly, Kris put his hand to his wal­let, ready to pull his ID as the door was thrown open.

“Whoa, Adam, dude!” The wo­man’s voice was rough, hoarse even.

“Hey,” Adam replied un­eas­ily. “I didn’t ex­pect you back so soon.”

Kris re­laxed im­me­di­ately; this was def­in­itely not a Di­vi­sion Agent.

“Who’s that?” chirped a second wo­man’s voice as Kris turned to see a red­head and tall, lanky blonde en­ter­ing the apart­ment. Kris vaguely re­called the red­head from the case files and figured she was the bar wait­ress that Cook had ref­er­enced. The blonde, he didn’t re­cog­nize, but she openly gawked at him and looked to Adam. “He’s cute!” she said in the same chip­per tone.

Kris smiled sheep­ishly and felt a flush on the back of his neck. Adam turned pink. “Al­lis­on, Megan, this is—” he began, nod­ding to each wo­man, but Al­lis­on cut him off with a stern look and tut.

“Get your butt in­to the hall­way, now,” she said, cast­ing a sus­pi­cious glance in Kris’ dir­ec­tion be­fore for­cing a smile. It made Kris feel un­easy, like she knew something he didn’t.

Adam gave her a be­wildered look and sat back on his feet be­fore stand­ing. “Look if this is about the couch…”

Al­lis­on blinked at the stain on the couch like she hadn’t even no­ticed it be­fore. She shook her fiery mane. “Hall­way,” she de­man­ded.

“Okay okay,” he said with a sigh be­fore fol­low­ing her out. “Play nice,” he said to Megan and glanced back to give Kris an ad­or­ing smile be­fore Al­lis­on slammed the door.

Huh. Well, that was odd.

Kris and Megan were left to stare at each oth­er in the ab­rupt si­lence. Megan was the first to laugh and she hur­ried over. “I’m Megan,” she cooed be­fore bend­ing to grab Kris in­to a hug. He re­turned the em­brace, a bit awk­wardly.

“Kris,” he sup­plied be­fore curi­ously ask­ing, “Do you know what that was about?”

Megan pulled back and glanced to­ward the door. “Oh, she prob­ably wants to yell at him, again,” Megan said dis­missively. “She’s been do­ing that a lot, lately.”

“Why?”

“Be­cause she knows things—well, sees them and gets mad when he doesn’t listen,” Megan ex­plained as she dropped in­to a rock­ing chair.

Kris blinked in sur­prise. Was she really be­ing that can­did about their gifts? Most people pre­ferred to keep them a secret, but…

“What do you mean ‘sees?’” Kris asked as he took a seat on the end of the couch that wasn’t stained. He was start­ing to worry.

“The _fu­ture_ ,” Megan replied, with a wave of her hand. “She’s a seer.”

Kris just stared for a mo­ment be­fore swal­low­ing thickly. What was he sup­posed to say to _that_? How could he not let on that he knew ex­actly what she was talk­ing about? He was re­mem­ber­ing more and more of Al­lis­on’s file, in­clud­ing the fact that she was gif­ted.

“You mean she’s a Watch­er?” Kris asked quietly, keep­ing his eyes trained on Megan’s.

Megan’s brow rose be­fore she leaned for­ward. “Oh my God, are you one, too?” she whispered.

“A Watch­er?” Kris scrubbed the back of his neck. “Well, no, but—”

“You can still do stuff?” Megan in­ter­rup­ted, look­ing giddy.

“I…” Kris said hes­it­antly be­fore nod­ding. “Yeah.”

Megan clapped her hands and scooted her chair closer to Kris. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” she said with glee in her eyes.

Kris stared. Should he really show her? Could she be call­ing his bluff? Well, why the hell not? It clearly didn’t freak her out that he was—well—a freak.

“Watch that magazine,” Kris said point­ing at the cof­fee ta­ble be­fore the wrinkled mu­sic magazine rose up to hov­er in the air be­fore float­ing to land in Megan’s lap. Kris grinned at how eas­ily it had been to do.

Megan cooed in awe be­fore cast­ing Kris a de­vi­ous look. She took the magazine in­to her hand and gave it a slight twist and sud­denly, the cov­er be­came that of a past is­sue of Cos­mo­pol­it­an.

“You’re a Shifter!” Kris said quickly. He was amazed at the con­cen­tra­tion of gif­ted people in one area that wasn’t a part of Di­vi­sion.

Megan dropped the magazine and grinned. “We’re all a little _tal­en­ted_ around here,” she said smugly.

“I’ll say,” Kris drawled with a chuckle. “I feel like I should in­tro­duce my­self, again, now that we really know each oth­er.”

Megan laughed and rocked her chair. “Well, I’m still Megan.”

“Kris.”

Be­fore the dorky ex­change could con­tin­ue any fur­ther, the apart­ment door opened. Kris turned to see Adam look­ing dev­ast­ated and his smile fell.

* * *

Adam felt sick. He could hardly be­lieve what Al­lis­on had just told him. She’d had a vis­ion, but didn’t know what it meant un­til she ac­tu­ally saw the per­son from the vis­ion and that per­son was Kris. He was a li­ar—well, he wasn’t ne­ces­sar­ily a li­ar, but he was def­in­itely a sneaky little bas­tard. He was also dan­ger­ous to well-be­ing of Adam and his friends. This was ex­actly what Adam wor­ried about in the back of his mind, what al­ways ter­ri­fied him—be­ing in­filt­rated by Di­vi­sion.

“Get out,” Adam said hol­lowly as soon as he laid eyes on Kris. “She told me what you are,” he ad­ded. “Get out.”

Kris looked calm but Adam could see the sud­den ten­sion in his strong neck. Megan was the first to say something, though.

“Oh, don’t be ri­dicu­lous,” Megan said with a shake of her head. “He’s just a Mover. He’s one of us. He can stay.”

“No,” Adam spat in the face of Megan’s au­da­city. “He is _not_ one of us.”

“He’s Di­vi­sion,” Al­lis­on poin­ted out as she stood at Adam’s side.

At that re­mark, Matt ducked in­to the room. “Did I just hear someone say we’re fucked?” he asked, likely try­ing to be cool, but it came out a little pan­icked.

Kris rolled his eyes. “Do I look like Di­vi­sion?” he asked. “And even if I was, what would it mat­ter?”

Adam felt a build-up of rage mixed with fear in his chest. He wanted to push Kris’ mind so badly—make him jump out of a win­dow or something, any­thing to make him go away and get out of Adam’s sight, and buy them time to get the hell out of here be­fore Di­vi­sion’s cav­alry ar­rived.

But it hurt too much and Adam damned him­self for fall­ing too quickly for an­oth­er man. There was also the slight­est chance that what Al­lis­on saw wasn’t true, which is why Adam just wanted Kris out of his life in­stead of dead on the street be­low.

“What did you see, babe?” Megan asked, bra­cing against her chair. There was fear in her eyes.

Adam answered for Al­lis­on. “Me in one of their cages,” he sup­plied im­me­di­ately. “And him watch­ing me,” he ad­ded as he in­dic­ated Kris.

Megan gasped as Al­lis­on went to the win­dow to look down at the al­ley aside the build­ing. Adam was re­lieved when she said, “Noth­ing, yet.”

“Great,” Adam said with a terse nod be­fore he frowned. “Get out of here, Kris!” he snapped, try­ing to keep the hurt out of his voice. “Is that even your name?”

“I can make him get out,” Matt in­ter­rup­ted as he took a few pro­tect­ive steps for­ward. “He’s scrawny.”

“I’m Agent Kris Al­len and I’m not go­ing any­where,” Kris said, look­ing calmer than ever as he stood. “You’re a mur­der­er and I can’t let you go.”

That was not what Adam had ex­pec­ted to hear. “What the hell are you talk­ing about?” he de­man­ded.

Matt didn’t wait for an ex­plan­a­tion and charged at Kris, who dodged Matt’s grab by fall­ing on the couch and hurt­ling over it in a move that Adam wouldn’t be­lieve without see­ing it firsthand.

“Matt, stop!” Megan shouted, already on her feet as Matt scrambled after Kris. “Adam can make him leave!”

“Twelve years ago, you forced an Agent to com­mit sui­cide to save your­self,” Kris ac­cused, voice clear and quick. He moved out of Matt’s way as Matt tumbled over the couch. “We can’t have you on the streets, Adam. You’re a danger to every­one here.”

Adam’s tem­per sud­denly ran hot. This was crazy. He thought Di­vi­sion just wanted to ma­nip­u­late him like they had done to his moth­er. But the “murder” was why they really wanted him? It was bull­shit. He raked his teeth over his lower lip and balled his fist. “You don’t know what you’re talk­ing about!” he said, eyes nar­row­ing.

“Yes, I do,” Kris said firmly. “I’ve read the case files. You made him put a gun to his head. He had a fam­ily and you killed him.”

The girls were both taken aback. Megan put a hand to her face and Al­lis­on gave him a side-eyed look. Adam knew it was start­ling to hear if you didn’t know the whole story un­like Matt, who rose up be­hind Kris with a glare and said, “Adam, dude, we ser­i­ously don’t have time for this.” Adam ig­nored him.

“I was try­ing to save my moth­er’s life!” Adam snapped, feel­ing old an­ger twitch­ing through him.

“She was no vic­tim,” Kris replied after glan­cing to­ward Matt. “She had killed be­fore, too. Leila had no less than a dozen kills to her name.”

“Be­cause they made her do it!” Adam said shrilly. “Your fuck­ing people are the mur­der­ers, not us.”

Kris shook his head, eyes look­ing guarded, now. “She had a choice and so did you. I’m tak­ing you in.”

Adam hated that he had to do this but he knew he must if he was to stop Kris and the Di­vi­sion from cap­tur­ing him now. Push­ing Kris’ mind with the sug­ges­tion of the real story meant he had to re­live it too, but it was worth it for his con­tin­ued free­dom.

Adam con­cen­trated and pushed his thoughts in­to Kris.

_It was the day that his moth­er fi­nally re­belled against her keep­ers and told them no, that she wouldn’t kill again. Adam was twelve and she had es­caped with him by flee­ing their home in the Los Angeles Di­vi­sion fa­cil­ity. They barely made it out of the city be­fore Agents were com­ing after them, but they man­aged to elude cap­ture thanks to a Shad­ow._

_Four years later, Adam and his moth­er lost their Shad­ow when they ran out of money to pay him. Di­vi­sion sent their top two Agents in hot pur­suit. The Agents were ruth­less when they fi­nally cornered the pair, but Adam’s moth­er wouldn’t give him up. She re­fused to let them make her son in­to one of their pup­pets like they had done with her._

_Guns had been drawn after his moth­er was de­clared a lost cause by the Di­vi­sion. Shots were fired and in the end, Adam’s moth­er and an Agent were dead._

_Adam was left alone, a scared teen­ager on the run, as he made his own es­cape after the chaos of the hor­rible show­down._

Kris pressed a hand to his head as Adam hit him with the sug­ges­tions to be­lieve this story all at once.

”Stop!” Kris shouted and dizzily took a step away from Adam, hold­ing his hand out, but Adam per­sisted and con­tin­ued. Kris had to know.

“Adam, come on!” Matt whispered harshly over the si­lent ex­change.

When Kris next locked eyes with Adam, he saw sad­ness there. “I’m sorry, I had no idea,” Kris said softly.

“Of course you didn’t,” Adam replied hotly. “Now, get out!”

This time, he didn’t just say the words; he pushed a sug­ges­tion, too.

Kris obeyed.

* * *

Cook began to worry about Kris’ situ­ation after the first hour passed without any com­mu­nic­a­tion what­so­ever. Surely Kris had Lam­bert and his friends at ease by this point. Though, there was the pos­sib­il­ity that Kris didn’t real­ize Di­vi­sion’s team was ready by now.

Cook was con­sid­er­ing tak­ing the ini­ti­at­ive and over­tak­ing the build­ing be­fore they got the sig­nal, but his thoughts were in­ter­rup­ted when his phone rang. It was Kris.

“Well, hello there,” Cook said with a smile as he answered, only to be bom­barded with an angry south­ern drawl.

“You lied to me!”

Cook blinked, taken aback. “You’ll have to be more spe­cif­ic, but I’m cer­tain that I haven’t—”

“He’s not a mur­der­er! He was de­fend­ing him­self and his mama,” Kris growled,

Mouth draw­ing in­to a thin line, Cook replied calmly, “Where are you?”

“Walkin’!”

“Where, Kris? Are you say­ing that you have left the mark?”

Kris made an un­in­tel­li­gible scoff and re­mark. “Yeah,” he huffed. “I left be­cause he asked me to.”

Cook nod­ded slowly, real­iz­ing what had likely happened. Kris had been pushed, which was un­der­stand­able if his cov­er had been blown, which was highly likely giv­en that Kris was in­ex­per­i­enced in the field.

“Listen to me, Kris,” Cook said. “Those re­ports are ac­cur­ate. People were killed be­cause of Adam and Leila Lam­bert. Whatever Adam said—”

“He didn’t just tell me!” Kris snapped. “I felt it. I felt what happened to him! We—Di­vi­sion made them do it! He was so scared, Cook. Di­vi­sion just wants him for his gifts.”

“Kris,” Cook began as frank as he could, “you’ve been pushed. Adam pushed those thoughts in­to your mind. He’s try­ing to con­fuse you. He wants to es­cape. We need to catch him be­fore he harms any more people. Don’t you real­ize what be­ing pushed means? He in­filt­rated your mind. And look what happened. He got rid of you so that he can run. Stop and think for a second, Kris. You know what Push­ers are cap­able of do­ing.”

Kris went quiet. Cook knew Kris had to be very con­fused, right now. He only hoped that what he said had been enough to con­vince Kris to come to his senses. Adam Lam­bert was a mur­der­er. Cook wanted him off the streets, and he hoped that Kris did too.

“I…” Kris said be­fore his voice died off and he cleared his throat. “I’m go­ing back,” he an­nounced, voice firm. “I should have known he pushed me. I could feel it.” A pause. “We can’t let him get away.”

“Ex­actly,” Cook said, feel­ing re­lieved. “Now, tell me more about the in­side of the build­ing and how many people there are.” He star­ted mov­ing from the bench where he was loun­ging and to­ward a group of thick-necked men in suits. They were hold­ing fast, watch­ing for the sig­nal to move to­wards the tar­get. “And Kris, you can’t head back in­to the build­ing. He already knows he can push you. There’s no telling what Lam­bert will make you do if you go back in there.”

* * *

_Shit._ This was bad. Adam couldn’t be­lieve how quickly his even­ing of step­ping out had turned in­to an­oth­er night on the run.

As soon as Kris had left and they’d checked the win­dows to guar­an­tee he was gone, Adam and Matt had star­ted ar­guing over what to do. Adam op­ted to just flat out run from the build­ing on foot—that had al­ways worked for him be­fore. He didn’t care the dir­ec­tion; he just wanted to get away. Matt wanted to be more stra­tegic about it and sug­ges­ted vari­ous dis­guises to cause a dis­trac­tion, but there was no time.

“Adam, wait!”

Adam was two steps out of the door when Al­lis­on called out to him. He turned back with a frantic look.

“My car,” Megan said be­fore she was push­ing past Adam, in­to the hall­way. “We can use my car. That’s bet­ter than be­ing on foot.” Adam agreed and si­lently offered thanks for friends with cool­er heads than him or Matt.

The four of them all piled out in­to the hall­way and began mov­ing quickly for the stairs.

“What if they’re wait­ing for us?” Megan asked.

Adam shushed her for voicing his biggest fear. She glanced back with pan­ic in her eyes, but Adam nod­ded for her to go ahead be­hind Matt as Matt opened the stair­well door. They moved quickly but quietly down the old stairs, which creaked and groaned be­neath their feet. Megan dug out her keys and ex­plained ex­actly where her car was on the street. They only had to run half a block to make it. Odds were look­ing up.

On the ground floor, the world ex­ploded.

The locked stair­well door smashed open to re­veal a stern look­ing man in a black suit. Matt let out a slew of swears as he fought the Agent and backed him out of the door­way so Megan could run for her car. She screeched as an Agent shoved her to the ground out­side of the build­ing and Al­lis­on was quickly push­ing past Adam to lit­er­ally jump in­to the for­ay be­fore he could stop her.

Adam paused in the door­way and quickly pushed an Agent in­to be­liev­ing that his next tar­get was an­oth­er one of the Agents. He didn’t get the chance to watch them scuffle. As soon as one Agent turned away, an­oth­er took his place and grabbed Adam by the front and threw him to the ground.

It was jar­ring to hit the side­walk on all fours and Adam had to re­fo­cus be­fore he could get a grip on his own mind again. This time he sent the nearest Agent run­ning up the stairs, con­vinced that Adam wasn’t the mark. However, much to Adam’s dis­tress, there was still two more Agents and one had a Taser out be­fore he could do any­thing more.

Adam cried out in pain as the Taser leads were jammed in­to his side. He saw noth­ing but white and heard his own heavy breath­ing as he fell to the con­crete.

“Get the tran­quil­izers, now!” someone barked as Adam tried to push up. He was caught in a tackle and felt the burn­ing buzz of the Taser against his ribs once more. He went stiff be­fore drop­ping like a rock.

Adam didn’t even have the strength to cry out when a needle stuck the flesh of his arm. As he passed out, he saw his friends first lined up and then shoved down to the side­walk where they were placed in hand­cuffs.

And it was all be­cause of him.

* * *

Adam’s mind was so drug addled that he didn’t know how many days had passed since his cap­ture. His de­ten­tion room was simple and re­minded him of a hos­pit­al. It con­tained noth­ing but a bed, med­ic­al in­stru­ments that were track­ing his vi­tals, and taupe-colored walls. The only win­dow was a small rect­angle on the door to the guard walk­way, though he knew they had cam­er­as on him for view­ing at all times. The door was re­in­forced steel and could only be opened from a guard sta­tion situ­ated in the cen­ter of the block, which faced every in­di­vidu­al room.

Adam knew this be­cause every Di­vi­sion de­ten­tion area had been the same and he re­membered them all.

Adam’s vis­ion swirled with ver­tigo as he tried to fo­cus. Di­vi­sion liked to keep their “pa­tients” com­fort­able, but ul­ti­mately dis­or­i­ented. In fact, the only reas­on he was awake was due to a voice filling the room com­ing from the in­ter­com.

“Adam,” the voice tried again, gentle and con­cerned, but crackled by the elec­tron­ics.

Adam didn’t know how many times his name was called. His vi­tals subtly spiked at his shock when he re­cog­nized the voice. It wasn’t one of the doc­tors. It wasn’t one of the guards. It was Kris— _Spe­cial_ Agent Al­len as he’d heard tossed around dur­ing his triple-guarded out­ing to a court­yard on an up­per level. The guards ten­ded to be loose-tongued around the ve­get­able-like “pa­tients” since few of them would have the strength to even re­call the con­ver­sa­tions, after all.

Adam slowly rolled his head to­ward the door and res­ted his cheek to the pil­low. He blinked, eyes glassy, at the pair of warm brown eyes watch­ing him through a small win­dow on his room’s door, which had a but­ton that Kris could push for the in­ter­com. Adam knew that soft gaze, but he didn’t trust it. That gaze ruined his life.

It didn’t strike him for a few seconds, but Adam knew this was the ex­act scen­ario that Al­lis­on had seen.

As soon as Adam began to move, he heard the typ­ic­al buzzes and clicks that ac­com­pan­ied the open­ing of the room’s door. They were ac­tu­ally let­ting Kris in­to the room? That was un­pre­ced­en­ted. Some strings must have been pulled for this to hap­pen.

Dur­ing his trip out­doors, Adam had also gleaned that Spe­cial Agent Al­len was fa­cing an in­quiry in­to his field op­er­a­tions, though Kris was still be­ing com­men­ded by the oth­ers for aid­ing in Adam’s cap­ture. Adam de­cided one of the guards must have some sort of rev­er­ence for that bull­shit. How con­veni­ent.

Adam watched as Kris, dressed pro­fes­sion­ally in a white shirt, tie, and black slacks, entered the room and made his way over to the bed. An­oth­er voice then said, “You have five minutes, tops, and you know what to do if he tries to push.”

“Got it,” Kris shot back over his shoulder, an edge of an­noy­ance in his tone like he’d been told this one too many times.

The door sealed it­self and the sound of the room re­turned to the quiet hum of ma­chines.

“Why are you here?” Adam asked weakly, hav­ing to strain past the dense fog of his mind to grasp the words he needed to say.

Adam watched as Kris’ eyes slid over him, round­ing back to stare at the IV. “Tell me more about your mom,” he said quietly.

Only two words came to Adam’s slow mind then. “Fuck you.”

Kris winced slightly. It was just a twitch across his young, hand­some face, but it was prom­in­ent enough for Adam to pick up on. Good. He hoped it stung.

“I want to know why she did what she did,” Kris con­tin­ued in the same tone.

Adam stared hard at Kris, con­fused and angry. He wanted to push a thought so badly, but he knew that it would be a struggle to do un­der the in­flu­ence of so many drugs. He wanted Spe­cial Agent Al­len to leave, to be out of his sight.

Adam scoffed, “You have your re­cords. Isn’t that enough? Don’t they show you how they made her in­to an as­sas­sin?”

Kris let out a sigh. “I want to know why she tried to run away with you, to take you away from it all.” His eyes met Adam’s then. “That’s not in the file,” he ad­ded.

Set­tling down, Adam stared at Kris in mild shock. “Are you—are you ask­ing me to plead my case?”

“Maybe,” Kris said, swal­low­ing. “I just want to know why she didn’t want this for you. I need to know what they did to her and why she fought so hard to save you. I just need to know more.”

Adam’s eyes drif­ted up to the ceil­ing. He struggled to re­call his moth­er’s beau­ti­ful, smil­ing face. He stared at that men­tal im­age as he went back to the day that his moth­er tried to save him. His vi­tals began to el­ev­ate again be­fore he simply answered, “Okay.”

* * *

Even if you caught the big fish, there was al­ways room for scru­tiny, es­pe­cially when you were the new guy and had al­most lost said big fish in the pro­cess of reel­ing him in. Kris was fa­cing a full in­quiry in­to his hand­ling of the Lam­bert case, which meant desk duty for the week lead­ing up to the big meet­ing.

Of course, with­in that time, there was plenty of room to get in­to trouble, if he wanted. Not that he was in­tend­ing to start more trouble for him­self, but he wanted to go deep­er, maybe dis­cov­er the whole story. Maybe it was be­cause he’d been pushed or maybe it was real in­tu­ition, but Kris hadn’t been able to let the Lam­bert case go. Lam­bert was caught, it should be closed, but Kris still had some ink­ling that there was more to the events that had led up to Leila Lam­bert’s death and the fatal de­mise of two Di­vi­sion Agents.

Kris star­ted by dig­ging through the main files, look­ing for any­thing that struck him as odd and the con­ver­sa­tion with Adam stuck in his mind. Adam had in­sisted that his moth­er had damn good reas­on to turn on Di­vi­sion, that lives were at stake—namely, Leila and Adam’s. It had all star­ted with a stroke. Leila had over­ex­ten­ded her mind and stroked out in the middle of a mis­sion. She’d been left be­hind for oth­er Agents to col­lect and give her care. Kris thought it was ludicrous that Di­vi­sion would know­ingly dump one of their own, but Adam in­sisted that was what had happened. It had taken sev­er­al months for Leila to re­cov­er and then, they had run.

The files Kris checked were clear of any­thing un­usu­al. There were no files miss­ing and there were no re­ports of Leila hav­ing a stroke or be­ing left be­hind. What irked Kris, though, was that he didn’t have the med­ic­al and the form­al in­quiry re­cords.

Those re­quired a high­er se­cur­ity clear­ance.

“What are you try­ing to prove?” Cook had asked when Kris ap­proached him with the re­quest.

Kris had shaken his head. “I’m not try­ing to prove or over­turn any­thing. I just want to un­der­stand him bet­ter.”

Cook had paused to scratch his chin and tilt his head in thought, squint­ing slightly at Kris. “You know, you could get in­to a lot of trouble if you stir this pot,” Cook said calmly.

“I know,” Kris had said quietly but in­tently, “So, I was hop­ing you could use a little dis­cre­tion.”

Sigh­ing, Cook had fi­nally agreed with the stip­u­la­tion, “If you think this is be­cause he pushed you, we can have your mind wiped.”

“No,” Kris had said. “I just like to fol­low through on things.” That had made Cook smile.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Barely a day passed be­fore Cook was at Kris’ desk and in­vit­ing him out for cof­fee at two o’clock in the af­ter­noon. “I still need to give you the full tour,” Cook said with a forced smile.

Kris stared at Cook for a mo­ment. They had gone on a full tour of the fa­cil­it­ies less than a week pri­or. Be­fore Kris could voice this fact, though, he no­ticed the tense look in Cook’s eyes. If there was one thing that Kris knew about the en­ig­mat­ic Agent Cook, it was that Cook didn’t sweat things, ever.

“Cool,” Kris said smoothly be­fore stand­ing and pulling on his suit jack­et as he forced a smile of his own. “I could use a walk and some caf­feine.”

Cook backed up. “I also have to give you a nick­name,” he said can­didly be­fore turn­ing to­ward the el­ev­at­ors. “How do you feel about be­ing called a neo­phyte?”

“You can’t just call me the rook­ie, huh?” Kris replied with a snort of laughter.

“That’s not col­or­ful enough.”

“What col­or is a neo­phyte?”

“Chartreuse,” Cook dead­panned as they stepped in­to the el­ev­at­or.

Kris stared in be­wil­der­ment as the el­ev­at­or doors closed. “Is that a word or did you just sneeze?” His brow rose when Cook swiped an iden­ti­fic­a­tion card through a read­er at the top of the el­ev­at­or pan­el and quickly pushed four seem­ingly ran­dom floor but­tons.

“What’re you—?” was all Kris could get out be­fore Cook pressed a fin­ger to his lips and subtly ges­tured with his head to the corner of the el­ev­at­or above Kris. Kris knew well enough not to look dir­ectly up in­to the sur­veil­lance cam­era as the el­ev­at­or began to des­cend.

Cook stood back from the pan­el and sighed as he star­ted straight­en­ing his tie, likely to make this scene look like busi­ness as usu­al for the video-only cam­era over­look­ing the el­ev­at­or car. “Kris, listen to everything I say be­cause I’m not go­ing to have time to re­peat my­self. We have to hurry be­fore they real­ize which floor we’ll be on,” he said quickly. Cook paused un­til Kris nod­ded in un­der­stand­ing.

“I found the files you wanted, but I couldn’t get to them. The only per­son who has ac­cess to them is Fuller. I checked.” Cook stopped fid­dling with his tie and turned slightly to­ward Kris. “As sus­pi­cious as that sounds, that’s not why we’re here,” Cook said quickly, speak­ing over Kris be­fore Kris could get a word out. Kris shut his mouth and resigned him­self to listen.

“On Fri­day,” Cook began be­fore tak­ing a breath, “they’re tak­ing Lam­bert and his Watch­er friend to headquar­ters in Hong Kong. They’re go­ing to match him against the strongest known Push­er in the de­ten­tion ranks and force the girl in­to com­pli­ance with Di­vi­sion. They’ll use a Wiper, a Push­er, and who knows what com­bin­a­tion of drugs to al­ter her mind. They think mak­ing her in­to an ally will give them a way to con­vince Lam­bert he should work with them.”

Kris blinked and swal­lowed roughly as he tried to di­gest that in­form­a­tion. His eyes widened when Cook looked away and said, “But that’s not all.”

“How could there pos­sibly be more?” Kris said in a rush and drew a stern look from Cook.

“Your in­quiry meet­ing to­mor­row, they’re plan­ning to wipe you. Com­pletely. The last five years, if not more. No Di­vi­sion. No Academy. Everything will be gone.”

Kris was star­ing agape at this point. The blunt­ness of Cook’s words startled him. Cook couldn’t be ser­i­ous. They couldn’t just wipe him without his per­mis­sion. They couldn’t just make him go away. Cook was talk­ing about some ser­i­ous memory re­mov­al and pos­sible dam­age and that’s not how Di­vi­sion worked. They were reput­able. They stopped the bad guys. They didn’t do any­thing drastic un­less they had a darn good reas­on. So, why would they want to wipe him clean after his first suc­cess­ful mis­sion? It didn’t make any sense to Kris.

The el­ev­at­or opened to re­veal a walk­way that Kris had nev­er seen be­fore and he was sud­denly ap­pre­hens­ive about fol­low­ing Cook out onto it. Cook glanced back and frowned. “Do you want me to save your mind from be­ing burned or not?”

“How do you know all of this?” Kris de­man­ded.

Cook’s ex­pres­sion thinned. “I was briefed an hour ago.”

Kris was still hes­it­ant. “Do you real­ize how crazy this sounds? And how do I know you’re not tak­ing me to be wiped, right now?”

“You don’t,” Cook sat frankly. “But if you’ll hurry along, I can get you out through a back way on this level. It’s up to you, Kris.”

Trad­ing stares with Cook, Kris had to ques­tion how well he trus­ted his part­ner. If Cook couldn’t be trus­ted, he was about to walk in­to his own de­mise. If Cook could be trus­ted, he was sched­uled to meet the same de­mise at ten-thirty the fol­low­ing morn­ing.

“Where are we any­way?” Kris asked as he ex­ited the el­ev­at­or and watched the door close, feel­ing his world col­lapsing in on him.

“De­ten­tion ob­ser­va­tion deck,” Cook said as he star­ted walk­ing quickly. “No cam­er­as, here and there’s an emer­gency exit that leads out to the gar­age. You can get out that way, with our help”

“You’re pos­it­ive they won’t know I’m gone? And who else is help­ing?” Kris felt lost. Was this some sort of plan?

“Pos­it­ive,” Cook said with a nod as he paused to knock on a door, which promptly opened to re­veal a smil­ing Brooke, who ges­tured them in­side the dark room.

Kris knew this was _the_ de­cis­ive mo­ment for put­ting his trust in Cook and he was tense when he entered the room. He was com­pletely dumb­foun­ded when he saw the pleth­ora of weapons, Kevlar, and gas masks spread out on the floor. The most sur­pris­ing thing though was the sight of Matt sit­ting in a room be­low them.

“Can he see us?” Kris asked in as­ton­ish­ment as he circled the ob­ser­va­tion pane at his feet. He had no idea that the de­ten­tion room ceil­ings were some­how two-paned glass though they looked like a per­fectly nor­mal, taupe-painted ceil­ings.

“Not a thing,” Brooke replied as she ap­proached Kris with a hol­ster and sidearm. “I think you know how to use these?”

Kris’ eyes boggled. “Yeah,” he said as he pulled off his suit jack­et. He slung his arms through leath­er loops and fastened them tight, so the gun would be held at his left breast.

“You mind telling me what the heck is go­ing on?” Kris shot in Cook’s dir­ec­tion as he checked the Glock that Brooke handed him. “I thought you were get­ting me out.”

After clos­ing the Vel­cro on his vest, Cook lif­ted his gas mask. “You know, it’s really hard to breathe in these things,” he said, sound­ing win­ded. “Though, I sup­pose that’s the point,” he ad­ded thought­fully.

“Cook,” Kris said evenly. “What’s with the secret ar­mory above Giraud’s cell? I had no idea this was here.”

Cook smiled. “It was just go­ing to be you, you know,” he ad­mit­ted as he closed his prox­im­ity to Kris. “I was go­ing to save the neo­phyte and some­how still save my ca­reer in the pro­cess.”

“I con­vinced him oth­er­wise,” Brooke said proudly.

“Giraud knows we’re com­ing to get him out,” Cook con­tin­ued. “He’s already work­ing his Shad­ow. The Sniffs will nev­er know we were down here.”

Baffled, Kris was un­sure of what do to with him­self. He couldn’t be­lieve that Cook and Brooke were stick­ing their necks out so far for him. Then, an­oth­er reas­on dawned on him.

“So, this is all for Adam too?” Kris asked, un­able to keep the sur­prise out of his voice.

“Partly,” Cook replied as he fin­ished suit­ing up. “He had friends if I re­call cor­rectly.”

Kris was re­lieved that all of this wasn’t just for him and that he wouldn’t have to con­vince Cook to in­ter­vene for Adam and Al­lis­on’s sake, but he couldn’t un­der­stand why Cook would want to save Adam and his friends. Cook had been hell-bent on this case.

“I just don’t get it,” Kris said as he took a vest from Brooke. “Why do you care what hap­pens to Adam? I thought you wanted him to be in de­ten­tion.”

Cook eyed Kris in­cis­ively. “Do you?”

Kris blinked. “No. No, I don’t.”

Cook nod­ded and sur­repti­tiously checked his sidearm. “What were you go­ing to do if I got you out of here be­fore they had the chance to wipe you?”

“Well…” Kris said as he trailed off be­cause his gut was say­ing he’d come back for Adam, though he didn’t have the first clue how he would have pulled it off.

“Ex­actly,” Cook said with a poin­ted fin­ger. “You have no idea.”

Brooke marveled at the two of them as she brought Kris a gas mask. “I hope you know how to use your train­ing un­der pres­sure,” she said as he handed off the mask, which Kris still wasn’t sure why it was needed.

“I’m as­sum­ing you have a plan,” Kris said to Cook.

“Eh, I’m still work­ing on that one,” Cook replied, mak­ing Kris un­easy. Cook pulled down the mask, which muffled his voice, but Kris could still dis­tinctly hear him say, “Let’s go be the su­per her­oes we al­ways wanted to be. “  


* * *

Adam awoke slowly and dazed from his heav­ily med­ic­ated slum­ber. He wasn’t sure which had startled his mind more: the sounds of his door be­ing opened or the en­su­ing shouts and shrieks com­ing from the guard walk­ways. His room was dark, which struck Adam as odd. Nor­mally, the lights were on at all hours. He was also per­turbed by the fact that the ma­chines, which nor­mally pumped him full of mind-in­hib­it­ing med­ic­a­tion, wer­en’t even beep­ing.

The ab­sence of the ma­chine noises and a re­peated shout from the walk­ways for every­one to get back in­to their rooms set Adam’s pulse at a steady climb. He ripped the leads out of the sensors at­tached to his body and the needle free of his arm as he pre­pared to flee from his room. It seemed that someone, some­how had blacked out the de­ten­tion block and he was not about to let an op­por­tun­ity to es­cape pass him by.

Still dazed, Adam crawled out of bed to find his feet. Thank­fully, he knew the ex­act lay­out of the room from his time spent there be­cause he could barely see in front of his face. Be­fore he had a chance to take a step, his legs shook from lack of use. He grabbed onto the nearest IV ma­chine and pole to hold him up as he made a break for the door. It only took seconds to reach his goal but to Adam’s slowed mind it felt much longer.

As soon as his wan­der­ing hand felt the door, Adam slipped free of the IV ma­chine and stumbled out onto the walk­way area, which was also pitched in dark­ness save for the few flash­lights boun­cing around as their car­ri­ers ran past. He barely made it an­oth­er step be­fore the gen­er­at­ors came on. The backup lights popped to life and cast an or­ange glow down on the may­hem on the de­ten­tion floor. De­tain­ees and guards were run­ning in all dir­ec­tions. Their shouts were all drowned out when an alarm im­me­di­ately began to scream at high and force­ful octaves.

Adam fell to his knees on the walk­way and covered his ears, un­sure if the alarm press­ing him down was to sig­nal that the gen­er­at­ors were kick­ing on or that there was an es­cape. The alarm was a re­cord­ing of a Bleed­er. They pos­sessed the deadly abil­ity to cre­ate son­ic noises that could burst blood ves­sels and vir­tu­ally li­quid­ate a brain. Adam had heard stor­ies about Bleed­ers and their deadly may­hem from his moth­er. There were only a few in ex­ist­ence and they were all in China. Di­vi­sion paid them to be as­sas­sins and ap­par­ently, to re­cord their screams for oth­er pur­poses.

A wispy gray gas began to rise from the floor be­low the walk­ways and Adam knew he had to get to his feet. He pulled him­self up on a walk­way rail­ing, still cringing due to the alarm, but nearly fell to his knees again out of sud­den fa­tigue. He held his breath and tried to use the rail­ing to pull him­self for­ward as someone in a suit and gas mask came run­ning straight for him. Fear­ing that he was caught, Adam at­temp­ted to push the man’s mind be­fore he could be reached, but that just sent Adam crash­ing to the walk­way as the forces around him be­came over­whelm­ing.

Adam was as­ton­ished when the man hauled him to his feet and away from the door­way to his room. They were quickly joined by a blond fe­male in de­ten­tion garb, also wear­ing a gas mask, who promptly pushed a mask on Adam’s face and pressed earplugs in­to his hand. Hast­ily, Adam shoved the plugs in­to his ears and was re­lieved that the Bleed­er re­cord­ing was now bear­able.

The man rapped on Adam’s mask with his knuckles be­fore point­ing for Adam to run. Though he struggled to breathe in the mask, Adam felt some of the fa­tigue leave him and he put one foot in front of the oth­er. This wasn’t fast enough for the man and wo­man, though, be­cause Adam found him­self be­ing dragged along the walk­way by them as his feet struggled to keep up.

The three of them quickly beat a path across the de­ten­tion block and around the guard sta­tion. Adam didn’t know where they were headed and he didn’t care where they ended up, as long as he didn’t have to go back to that damn room. They made it a few more yards be­fore a guard sud­denly stood in their way. Adam tensed, but the man help­ing him fired a stun gun be­fore the guard had a chance to raise his. The guard fell to side of a walk­way, which the trio turned down. Fear rose in Adam’s chest, again, as they got closer to the de­ten­tion room. He struggled to free him­self of his help­ers as they con­tin­ued to pull him for­ward.

“Let go of me!” Adam shouted, muffled by the mask and drowned out by alarm. That’s when he no­ticed the tat­toos on the wo­man’s arm and real­ized one of his sa­viors was Megan. Adam re­len­ted his fight and nearly hugged her on the spot. He wondered why they were still de­tain­ing her, but she was pulling him in­to the de­ten­tion room be­fore he could make an­oth­er move.

In­side the room, Adam im­me­di­ately no­ticed the per­fectly square hole in the ceil­ing and the shards of thick glass lit­ter­ing the floor. Adam looked back and forth between his res­cuers un­til Megan helped him over to stand be­neath the hole. The man, who Adam just couldn’t seem to place as even vaguely fa­mil­i­ar, let go of him to stand guard with a gun. Megan looked up and waved at an­oth­er man in a black suit and gas mask be­fore something was chucked down at them. Adam blinked at the rope lad­der that fell in front of his face. Was he really get­ting out of here? This ser­i­ously wasn’t a dream?

Megan shook the rope lad­der frantic­ally and it dawned on Adam that he should already be climb­ing. Step­ping onto the twist­ing rungs, Adam began to slowly pull him­self up­ward as his arm and leg muscles pro­tested from lack of use. Megan stead­ied the lad­der, which helped Adam move faster as he climbed.

When he reached the ceil­ing, Adam felt the lad­der sud­denly go loose and he glanced down in time to see three guards storm in­to the room. He watched help­lessly as Megan and her fel­low res­cuer backed away from the guards and stun guns, but as soon as one was trained on him, Adam con­cen­trated a glare and pushed a sug­ges­tion for the guard to stun one of the oth­er two. The tar­get yelped in pain as she went down after be­ing stunned and Adam scrambled the last few feet to get through the ceil­ing. The second man in a suit was there to drag Adam out of the hole and Adam was soon on all fours on the floor of a room pitched in dim light.

Adam glanced up in­to the masked face of the oth­er man as he was helped to his feet and felt a burst of mixed emo­tions—an­ger, re­sent­ment, ad­mir­a­tion—in his chest as he stared in­to the eyes of Spe­cial Agent Al­len. Giv­ing Kris a hard shove, Adam de­cided he could take it from there and began to make his way to the door. Kris had oth­er ideas and threw off his gas mask be­fore grabbing Adam by the arm.

“Don’t be stu­pid!” Kris man­aged to shout loud enough so Adam could just barely hear him. “Just wait a second!” he ad­ded be­fore let­ting go of Adam and turn­ing back to the hole to haul up the rope lad­der.

Liv­id, Adam tore off his mask and chucked it at Kris’ head. “They’re still down there! Don’t pull the rope up yet!” he shouted back.

Kris dodged the mask and scowled. “You think I don’t know that?!” He tossed the lad­der to the side of the hole and kicked a switch on the floor that made doors snap closed over the hole, seal­ing away the knock­out gas and noise. He pulled out his earplugs and so did Adam.

“They’ll find a way out,” Kris said in a more nor­mal tone as he ap­proached and grabbed Adam’s arm, again. “Time to go.”

“Don’t touch me!” Adam roared and yanked away from Kris, knock­ing him­self off bal­ance and stum­bling in­to the nearest wall.

“Hate me all you want,” Kris said as he watched Adam. “But I am get­ting you out of here. We’re all get­ting out here.”

“What the fuck does that even mean?” Adam asked, still pained by the fact that he had no fuck­ing clue what this res­cue was for.

Kris sighed in frus­tra­tion. “Come with me be­fore the guards raid the deck.”

“Fine,” Adam spat out the word. It soun­ded like a good idea, as much as it an­noyed him that it in­volved Kris. “Just don’t touch me.”

“You can’t even walk without me,” Kris poin­ted out as he grabbed Adam and pulled him off the wall. Adam re­luct­antly slung an arm around Kris’ shoulders and they star­ted mov­ing. “This way,” Kris grumbled as soon as they were out of the room.

The walk­ways were a maze, but Kris made pre­cise turns as they hobbled to­ward their des­tin­a­tion and Adam soon real­ized they were mov­ing across an­oth­er de­ten­tion block. How big was this build­ing?

“There,” Kris said as he nod­ded at the met­al door up ahead and they sped up un­til Kris had to pause to swipe an iden­ti­fic­a­tion card in a read­er next to the door. The read­er beeped and its light turned green as a lock popped open.

Both re­lief and hu­mid Chica­go air washed over Adam as they stepped out of the door. He blinked in the day­light and once his eyes fo­cused, he real­ized they were in a park­ing gar­age of some sort.

“Adam, come on,” Kris groaned as he hauled Adam for­ward, to­ward the back of a black pan­el van that was run­ning and seemed to be wait­ing.

“Fuck­ing took you long enough!” Matt’s fa­mil­i­ar breathy voice shouted at them as soon as Kris opened the back of the van. “Shit, Adam, you look like hell.”

Though Adam was shocked to see Matt, he didn’t have time to ques­tion how or why Matt was there and glowered be­fore he clamored in­to the back of the bench-less van. Kris fol­lowed and shut the doors.

“Where the hell is Alli—?” Matt star­ted.

“They got held up,” Kris in­ter­rup­ted as he moved up to­ward the front of the vehicle.

Matt scoffed in be­wil­der­ment. “So, now what? We just wait? I’m not okay with wait­ing.”

“No,” Kris said evenly. “It’s time for Plan B.”

“There wasn’t even a Plan A!” Matt frantic­ally shouted in Kris’ face.

Kris scowled. “Just drive!” he ordered.

Matt clearly didn’t need to be told twice be­cause he threw the van in­to gear and squealed away, down the gar­age ramp. The sud­den move­ment tossed Adam to the car­peted floor. Adam grumbled and glanced up to see Kris grabbing for something in the front seat. Kris turned around and dropped to sit on the floor of the van with a cell phone in his hand. He fiddled with it be­fore hold­ing it up to his ear.

“Brooke, where are they?” Kris said in­to the hand­set after a pause. Adam did not like the frown that crossed Kris’ face. “We’ll be there,” Kris said in as­sur­ance be­fore he closed the phone.

“And?” Matt promp­ted as soon as the phone was closed.

“What floor are we on?” Kris asked, seem­ing to think things over.

Matt stretched his neck out, gawk­ing as they swiftly roun­ded an­oth­er level of the gar­age. “Four!”

Adam’s eyes widened as Kris went to his knees and pulled a gun from a hol­ster un­der­neath his jack­et. “You bet­ter lie down and hang on,” Kris told him. “This is gonna get ugly.”  


* * *

The amount of dan­ger­ous shit that Matt had gone through in the pri­or week was un­be­liev­able. The list most re­cently in­cluded es­cap­ing his cell to find the van he was cur­rently driv­ing after Kris and Agent Cook had broken in through the ceil­ing while their ac­com­plice took out the power on the de­ten­tion block. He’d like to take Adam and fade in­to the shad­ows, but he couldn’t do that to Adam’s friends and not feel like a shit­head. Know­ing it was highly un­likely that the Kris or Cook could find an­oth­er Shad­ow will­ing to go on the run, he was stuck with all five of these knuckle­heads un­til he was caught, killed, or both.

Matt did not ap­prove of that short list of fates.

Ca­reen­ing the van around an­oth­er turn in the gar­age, Matt struggled to keep his cool and not white-knuckle the steer­ing wheel, which was dif­fi­cult to do when a Di­vi­sion Agent was sit­ting be­hind you with a gun. It wasn’t poin­ted at him, but still, Matt knew that Kris had a gun and he didn’t en­joy the feel­ing.

“Am I the valet?” Matt sar­castic­ally asked the rear view mir­ror. These Agents and their lack of plans were get­ting on his last nerve. Who went in­to a mass break­out without a clear plan? _Ser­i­ously._

“More like a cab,” Kris said as he glanced at the cell phone in his hand and then poin­ted to the dash­board pan­el. “That clock’s right.” Kris punc­tu­ated the state­ment by roughly chuck­ing the cell phone out of the pas­sen­ger side win­dow.

Matt glanced quickly over his shoulder. “Why did you just—” he began to ask about the phone.

“Di­vi­sion could trace it,” Kris ex­plained with a dis­missive shake of his head. “We’ve got two minutes un­til we’re pick­ing them up at the front doors.”

Matt knew he’d heard Kris cor­rectly, but… “You’re kid­din’ right?” he asked, feel­ing cyn­ic­al. “The front door. Could this be any­more fucked? They’re go­ing to fol­low us.”

“As long as you can get us out of here be­fore Di­vi­sion gets the chop­per in the air, we’re good,” Kris replied flatly.

“So, this is all on me, now?!” Matt snapped. “I can’t drive _and_ save the day!”

Kris was try­ing to look calm, but Matt could see the worry in his eyes. “You’ll be on the wheel. Cook and I will handle the rest. We’ll do our best if you do the same.”

Matt swore un­der his breath. He did not want to die today.

“So, I’m just sup­posed to lay here and do noth­ing?” Adam called out.

Matt glanced to see Adam in the rear view mir­ror as Kris turned to ad­dress him. “If we need you—” Kris began, but Adam cut him off.

“Fuck you! I’m help­ing. Give me something to do.”

Matt missed the rest of the con­ver­sa­tion as they barreled down the fi­nal ramp to­ward the gar­age exit. The gate guard was housed in the middle of two lanes and an exit bar was in front of the van.

“Kris?” Matt hast­ily promp­ted.

“Drive through it!”

“Shit,” Matt huffed as he braced for the im­pact and pressed down fur­ther on the ac­cel­er­at­or.

Matt traded wide-eyed stares with the gate guard as the van smashed head-on in­to the hard plastic bar, which broke and fell un­der­neath the tires. The van bounced over the debris as the vehicle flew out of the gar­age. Matt pulled a hard left on the wheel to keep from smash­ing in­to the curb and run­ning over an “Em­ploy­ee Park­ing Only” sign.

Squeal­ing through the swerve, the van teetered and Matt grit­ted his teeth as he si­lently begged for the vehicle to not tip over. Both Kris and Adam made sounds of sur­prise; it was likely they were be­ing knocked around in the back.

“Right!” Kris yelled from some­where be­hind Matt as the van headed away from the gar­age on a side street. “Take a right at the stop sign!”

Matt ig­nored the stop sign as he mo­ment­ar­ily slowed and then made a right. The van screeched through the wide turn. Matt spot­ted some glass double doors at the foot of the twenty-something story build­ing. As­sum­ing this was “the front,” he slammed on the brakes once he was near the doors, caus­ing more ruck­us in the back from Kris and Adam.

Shift­ing the van in­to park, Matt gaped at his shak­ing hands as he lif­ted them off the wheel. His breath was com­ing quick and he could feel his heart­beat in his throat, but he still man­aged to turn around and ask, “Where the hell are they?”

Matt watched as Adam threw open the pan­el van’s side door. Kris crouched in the open­ing and trained his gun on the build­ing. “What the hell are you do­ing?” Matt asked as Kris began to sweep his aim and glance up to­ward the high­er floors.

“Look­ing for something to shoot,” Adam answered as he crept closer to the open door, on his knees.

Matt rolled his eyes. “Oh, really? Be­cause I thought he was play­ing I Spy.”

“Shh,” Kris hissed mak­ing Matt frown. He didn’t like be­ing told to be quiet, but he swal­lowed his protest as soon as Kris said, “Here they come.”

Matt squin­ted at the build­ing. Thanks to the late af­ter­noon glare, he could just barely make out people run­ning to­ward the doors. “Shit,” he said when the doors opened to re­veal Al­lis­on run­ning in the lead, fol­lowed by Agent Cook with Megan thrown over his shoulder and about a mil­lion Agents and guards bring­ing up the rear. In ac­tu­al­ity, there were five people chas­ing Al­lis­on and Cook, but one Agent was too many for Matt.

“Watch your left!” Kris sud­denly yelled in warn­ing. He then waited all of two seconds be­fore he star­ted fir­ing his sidearm past Al­lis­on and Cook, at their pur­suers.

Matt couldn’t handle the gun­fire and turned to put his hands back on the wheel to wait for someone to tell him to drive. He felt his heart skip with each gun­shot and he hoped that Kris was ac­tu­ally shoot­ing with some sort of pur­pose.

Watch­ing the rear view mir­ror, Matt saw Al­lis­on scramble in­to the van. She was breath­less and her face was wet with tears. “Come on!” she help­lessly yelped at Agent Cook.

Adam was be­side Al­lis­on and seemed to be con­cen­trat­ing. Matt figured he was try­ing to as­sist Kris by push­ing the minds of the guards, but whatever Adam was do­ing didn’t help much be­cause Matt let out a ter­ri­fied, “Oh shit!” when a stray bul­let buzzed by him. Matt was wear­ing a vest like Kris, but he still had no in­terest in tak­ing one for the team.

Not know­ing wheth­er to duck for cov­er or to start driv­ing, Matt pressed back against his seat and tilted his head to look through the pas­sen­ger win­dow. He caught sight of a pur­su­ing Agent un­load­ing a few rounds in their dir­ec­tion, which caused every­one in the back to dive to the floor as the bul­lets hit the van with loud _thunks_. Adam raised up quickly and glared hard at the Agent, who dropped her gun be­fore fall­ing to her knees and press­ing her hands to either side of her head thanks to whatever sug­ges­tion Adam had poured in­to her mind.

A pang of re­lief hit Matt when Agent Cook ar­rived to dump an un­con­scious Megan in­to the van.

“Let’s go!” Matt shouted. He put the van in­to drive as he looked away from Adam and Al­lis­on pulling Megan in­to the back while Kris gave more sup­press­ive fire. Agent Cook yanked the pas­sen­ger door open to take the shot­gun seat as someone else shut the van’s side door. Not wait­ing for more or­ders, Matt hit the gas.  


* * *

Chica­go flew by as the van sped through the city. Adam did his best to re­main up­right and calm as he com­for­ted Al­lis­on, who was bawl­ing and fawn­ing over Megan.

“She was just try­ing to help me es­cape,” Al­lis­on said between her little sniffs and hic­cupped sobs. She care­fully brushed Megan’s hair away from the swollen and bleed­ing knot on her temple. “The bas­tard hit her with his gun.”

Cry­ing over your girl­friend’s bashed face was cer­tainly ex­pec­ted. Adam made no at­tempt to shush Al­lis­on, but he did try to hold and com­fort her. “She’ll be okay,” he said softly as he wrapped an arm around Al­lis­on’s shoulders. “You’re both ba­sic­ally real life Power Puff girls. This won’t keep her down.”

“What if she doesn’t wake up?” Al­lis­on asked fear­fully.

Adam frowned. “Can’t you see if she does?”

“No,” Al­lis­on said with a shake of her head. “I don’t see _any­thing_.” Her face tightened up with more emo­tion after she spoke and she leaned down to press a shaky kiss to Megan’s cheek. Then she was weep­ing and all Adam could think to do was rub her back sooth­ingly.

Glan­cing to­ward the front, Adam saw that Kris and the oth­er Agent were con­vers­ing as they checked their weapons. Matt looked tense and he kept check­ing the mir­rors, likely look­ing for a tail. Adam hoped they had enough of a head start that one wouldn’t be com­ing.

“How’s it go­ing back there?” the oth­er Agent loudly asked. Kris moved to the side so they both could look back to­ward Adam and the girls.

Adam rolled his eyes. “How do you think it’s go­ing?” he snipped. “She needs a doc­tor,” he con­tin­ued with a nod to­ward Megan. “And we need to get the fuck out of Chica­go.”

The Agent nod­ded, look­ing com­pletely calm des­pite their situ­ation. “I know a Stitch in North­ern Wis­con­sin,” he said, which caused Matt to give him a quick, du­bi­ous glance. The good part was that Stitches had the abil­ity to heal oth­ers, but Adam felt him­self won­der why they would head due North. There was no oth­er op­tion?

“She’ll be able to help Megan and Di­vi­sion won’t think to look there if we’re smart,” the Agent con­tin­ued. “It’s isol­ated and the town doesn’t even ex­ist on most maps. That’s where we’re go­ing as soon as we lose our tail.”

“We have a tail?” Matt asked fear­fully and checked the mir­rors.

“No,” Kris answered. “But we’re go­ing to.”

“They’ll dis­patch an in­ter­cept to try to hold us down un­til the chop­per ar­rives,” the oth­er Agent ad­ded. “We’re go­ing to lose the in­ter­cept be­fore that hap­pens,” he quickly said over Adam’s muttered swear. “Then we’ll be free to take back roads to head North.”

“And how the hell are you plan­ning to lose them that quickly?” Adam de­man­ded.

The Agent paused as the rauc­ous sound of a sport bike rev­ving up in­ter­rup­ted them. He turned quickly to look in the side mir­ror. “Good ques­tion,” he called out. “I’ll let you know when they catch up.”

_They?_ Adam slipped away from Al­lis­on and went im­me­di­ately to look through the tin­ted win­dows at the back of the van as the sound of mul­tiple sport bikes filled the air. There were three helmeted suits on sil­ver sport bikes be­hind the van. They wer­en’t dif­fi­cult to spot as they weaved through traffic at in­creas­ing speeds.

“They’re on our ass!” Matt yelled, sound­ing ter­ri­fied. “What do I do?!”

“Drive!” Kris shouted in reply as he quickly moved to the back of the van. He holstered his gun as he looked out the win­dow aside Adam.

“I hope you plan on do­ing something be­sides star­ing at them,” Adam said flatly.

Kris glanced over be­fore look­ing back to the win­dow and nod­ding. “If there was a plan, that would be the gist,” he replied. “Cook!” he then called out. “You any good at mov­ing at a dis­tance?!”

“No!” the oth­er Agent, Cook, called out. “We’re go­ing to have to let them get close!”

“Awe­some,” Kris huffed.

“He’s a Mover?” Adam asked, nod­ding to­ward Cook.

“We both are,” Kris replied. “We may need you to push them,” he said be­fore giv­ing Adam a chal­len­ging look. “Can you handle that?”

Adam glared at Kris for the ludicrous ques­tion. “You know I can.”

“Yeah,” Kris said quietly be­fore a smile twitched on his face. “I do.”

Kris’ smile quickly fell when a biker sud­denly broke free of the oth­er two and zoomed to­ward the back of the van. “On your six!” Kris yelled, which made Matt swear loudly and speed up.

Watch­ing the biker get close, Adam tried to time a pushed sug­ges­tion, but was dis­mayed when the sport bike dodged around the side of the van to zip past the driver’s side.

“He’s gonna turn back,” Al­lis­on said in a fear­ful tone after turn­ing her ter­ri­fied eyes to­ward Adam and Kris.

“He’s com­ing back!” Kris said loudly for her. “Cook?!”

“Don’t swerve,” Cook quickly told Matt. “Let him come at you head-on.”

Matt looked at Cook like he was out of his mind. “What?!”

“Don’t swerve!” Cook re­peated.

The biker got enough of a lead to pull a U-turn and head in their dir­ec­tion.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Matt said as he braced on the wheel. Al­lis­on whimpered and Adam held his breath as he watched. He hoped that Cook knew what he was do­ing.

In the second be­fore im­pact, Cook made pur­pose­ful ges­tures of quickly swip­ing his hands to either side. Both the biker and the bike were tossed out of the van’s way. The bike ca­reened past them and col­lided with a parked car while the biker was sent tum­bling to the side of the street. The biker crawled onto the curb and out of traffic. He got up right away, but then col­lapsed.

“One down,” Cook said, still com­posed.

Matt laughed in hys­ter­ic­al re­lief and Kris let out a whoop­ing cheer. Adam moved swiftly to catch Al­lis­on as she sighed and slumped in re­lief. “Lay down and rest,” Adam told her. “I think we’re go­ing to be all right.”

Al­lis­on nod­ded and sidled up next to Megan. She took one of Megan’s hands in­to her own and shut her eyes. Re­lieved that Al­lis­on was rest­ing, Adam turned back to the rear win­dows.

“That’s great,” he told Kris. “But there’s still two more.”

Kris nod­ded slowly. “You want to try, again?”

“Try, again?” Adam re­peated in con­fu­sion.

“You tried to push him. I saw it in your face.”

Adam traded stares with Kris. He wanted to ask why Kris was watch­ing him and not the bikers, but he let it go. “I’ll try,” Adam said. “I can’t prom­ise that it’ll work.”

“Just con­cen­trate,” Kris said in en­cour­age­ment. “Mov­ing tar­gets re­quire con­cen­tra­tion. You can handle this.”

“That’s enough pep talk,” Adam replied with a roll of his eyes, though a smile sneaked across his face.

“Would you two stop flirt­ing and fo­cus on us not dy­ing?!” Matt shouted over his shoulder. “They’re get­ting close!”

The bikes had been hold­ing back, but now, they were both gain­ing at high speeds. Adam knew they would soon over­take the van and pre­pared him­self by bra­cing his hands against the win­dow. He stared at the nearest biker and fo­cused on his push as the biker neared. As a test of his abil­ity, he si­lently willed the biker to swerve as he re­peated his sug­ges­tion and watched for a re­ac­tion.

_There’s a pot hole! Swerve!_

Sud­denly, the biker jerked the bike as if to dodge something in the road. Adam im­me­di­ately pushed an­oth­er, bolder thought. The biker jerked the bike, again, but this time, he kept go­ing at that di­ag­on­al and crashed in­to the oth­er biker. Bits of plastic and fiber­glass spewed in­to the air as the bikers were thrown from their bikes. Car horns blared and oth­er vehicles swerved to miss the wreck. The bikes were com­pletely smashed and the bikers were thrown to the side. As they each slowly got their feet, Adam pushed one last sug­ges­tion and watched as one biker run­ning tackled the oth­er in a fit of in­duced rage.

“Holy shit!” Matt called out. “Did you ser­i­ously just do that?”

Adam re­membered to breathe and let out a puff of an ex­hale as he dropped his fore­head to the win­dow.

“Wow,” Kris breathed. “That was crazy.”

Adam glanced to see Kris star­ing at him in awe. “I’ve made people do cra­zi­er things,” he said with a shrug.

They were in­ter­rup­ted when Cook gave Adam a round of ap­plause. “Not bad!” he called from the front of the van, which caused both Kris and Adam to turn to­ward his voice. “Without that tail, Di­vi­sion chop­per will have to rely on the Sniffs, who Matt should be cap­able of shield­ing us from.”

“You’re damn right I can!” Matt said proudly be­fore lower­ing his voice. “Just stay in this fuck­ing van if you know what’s good for ya.”

“Thank you,” Cook said be­fore turn­ing with a nod of ac­know­ledge­ment to the back of the van. “And that goes for all of you. You did well. They’ll nev­er find us on the back roads to Wis­con­sin.”

Matt shot a glance over his shoulder to Adam. “I’m mak­ing you a medal out of ma­car­oni,” he dead­panned.

Adam shook his head with a strained, but light laugh. He was still on edge and could hardly be­lieve this chase was over. Look­ing back to the win­dows, Adam watched as the may­hem of the bike wreck dis­ap­peared when they quickly left the main road. He frowned, feel­ing a mix­ture of re­lief and un­cer­tainty. He needed to ask Al­lis­on if she saw any­thing in his fu­ture when she woke up.

“How do you know they don’t have an­oth­er tail?” Adam asked in a more ser­i­ous tone.

Kris piped up to an­swer. “We don’t, but…” he traded know­ing glances with Cook. “We’re con­fid­ent that the Dir­ect­or won’t be play­ing this by the book and sent that tail without wait­ing for backup to be at the ready. That’s why they found us so quickly.”

“And lost us just as fast,” Cook ad­ded.

Adam opened his mouth to in­sist that they still be care­ful, that Di­vi­sion would nev­er stop, but he was in­ter­rup­ted when Al­lis­on sud­denly sat up.

“I see trees,” she an­nounced and glanced around at every­one in the van. “There’s go­ing to be a crap load of trees!” she ad­ded in rasp be­fore she ac­tu­ally smiled. “And we’re go­ing to live with them,” she fin­ished be­fore lay­ing back down to nuzzle Megan’s shoulder.

There was an awk­ward pause be­fore Matt cleared his throat. “So, she’s say­ing we can all be hip­pies?” he asked slowly. “Cool. I’ve al­ways wanted to hug a tree. I dream about it every Ar­bor Day.”

Ig­nor­ing Matt’s sar­casm, Adam slumped to sit on the floor while he res­ted his ex­hausted form against the wall of the van. Push­ing was hard work and Adam needed to re­charge. “Well, just let me know if you need me to do any­thing else…” he said, trail­ing off un­eas­ily. He was cer­tain he’d be on alert un­til they were free and clear of Illinois.

Adam tensed when Kris dodged for­ward to grab his shoulders and give him an ex­cited shake. The break­ing of his per­son­al bubble made Adam glance up to eye Kris, who was grin­ning.

“Listen to you! You’re so much cool­er than Su­per­man,” Kris said proudly. He re­leased Adam to sit back on his side of the van. “Just thought you should know,” he muttered with a shrug.

Smil­ing faintly, Adam closed his eyes as he fi­nally began to re­lax.  


* * *

Late af­ter­noon sun­light filtered through the blinds and warmed Kris as he dozed in a pol­ished wood rock­ing chair. It took nearly three days, but he’d fi­nally ex­hausted him­self enough to catch a small nap. He’d been on-edge since they ar­rived at the two-story home, which was set back from a fam­ily-owned orch­ard in a dense, over­grown forest. The re­clus­ive own­er was not only a Stitch, but she was also a re­tired Di­vi­sion doc­tor from the Los Angeles branch. She had healed Megan as soon as they ar­rived. Cook in­sisted that the eld­erly wo­man was trust­worthy and would help hide them, but Kris’ trust in hu­man­ity had waned since they fled Chica­go. He’d put his faith in Di­vi­sion for years and look what that had got­ten him.

A burst of hearty laughter from else­where in the house startled Kris and his hand went to his holstered gun as he roused. Real­iz­ing the noise was noth­ing to be jumpy over, Kris lowered his hand as his pulse calmed and he glanced blear­ily around the room. His head jerked to­ward the door­way and he star­ted to get to his feet when he no­ticed that he was be­ing watched.

“For a second there, I thought you might shoot me,” Cook said as he strolled in­to the room and took a seat next to Kris on a fancy-look­ing couch.

Kris sniffed sleepily be­fore he rubbed his face to wake him­self up. “If you call me a neo­phyte, again, I might,” he grumbled and shif­ted to sit up­right in his chair.

“After everything that’s happened, I’m cer­tain you’re de­serving of the ‘Agent’ title,” Cook replied.

Snort­ing a laugh, Kris scratched at his scruffy chin. “You talk to Brooke?” he asked as genu­ine con­cern crossed his face in a frown. Kris knew Brooke was a Shad­ow and that she had been care­ful to avoid the cam­er­as, but there was only so much she could feas­ibly get away with be­fore Fuller caught on.

Cook nod­ded slowly. “Like every­one else in the branch, she’s fa­cing a form­al in­quiry,” he ex­plained. “Gran­ted, they don’t sus­pect her of any wrong­do­ing since she used my card to ac­cess the break­er room.” Cook smiled faintly. “I’m pos­it­ive she’ll be able to keep in­form­ing us of de­vel­op­ments in the case.”

“Sounds like noth­ing but good news to me,” Kris replied as he rocked slowly.

“Eh,” Cook began with a squint­ing, thought­ful look. “She said Fuller is already in con­tact with oth­er branches, in­clud­ing the Ca­na­dians. He’s not go­ing to let up any­time soon.”

Kris nod­ded and paused for a mo­ment, con­sid­er­ing his words. “Thank you,” he even­tu­ally said after real­iz­ing he’d yet to thank Cook for stop­ping Di­vi­sion from ru­in­ing all of their lives. “You gave up a lot by de­cid­ing to go against Fuller’s or­ders. I don’t think I—we’ll ever be able to re­pay you.”

“If I’m not mis­taken, you would have done the same after be­ing told to take me in­to cus­tody,” Cook poin­ted out. “As for the oth­ers…” he began, but trailed off with a sigh. “I’ve been to Hong Kong. I know what they do to the de­tain­ees in Hong Kong. I couldn’t let that happened to any­one, let alone someone my part­ner is har­bor­ing feel­ings for.”

Halt­ing his chair, Kris traded glances with Cook. “I nev­er said—” he began.

“You didn’t have to,” Cook in­ter­rup­ted. “I’ve seen the way you act around him. It’s ac­tu­ally kind of cute.”

Kris stared in dis­be­lief as Cook sighed and got to his feet be­fore adding, “But you should say something to him be­fore he really does think you’ve been string­ing him along for the job.”

“How do you know that I even like him?” Kris asked slowly with a con­fused shake of his head.

“You’re an open book,” Cook ex­plained. “Has any­one ever told you that?”

Kris frowned at the men­tion of his biggest flaw. “Once or twice.” He had man­aged to fool Adam, but that wasn’t something he was proud of at this point.

“Then if I’m read­ing you cor­rectly,” Cook said with a squint and a smile. “You prob­ably want some of Megan’s fresh peach and blue­berry cob­bler, right?”

Oh, that soun­ded _amaz­ing_. Megan had been the moth­er hen of the group after boun­cing back from her head in­jur­ies.

“No,” Kris replied. His stom­ach tightened up in knots as he thought about a con­ver­sa­tion with Adam. “I need to do something first.”

A know­ing look crossed Cook’s face. “Right. I can see that you’re think­ing a lot. You should prob­ably get some fresh air. I sug­gest the gen­er­al back­yard area.”

“Adam’s out back?” Kris cla­ri­fied be­fore stand­ing.

“Yeah,” Cook replied with a nod and then a frown. “Are you plan­ning to shoot him?”

Kris’ brow knit­ted in con­fu­sion. “Is that a joke?”

“I’m just say­ing that I think you should leave your sidearm in­side.”

Though he was re­luct­ant to be sep­ar­ated from his weapon while they were all tech­nic­ally still in danger, Kris loosened the straps of his hol­ster. He handed the gun over to Cook be­fore stuff­ing his hands in­to the pock­ets on the baggy pair of jeans he was wear­ing. They’d stocked up on new clothes from a gen­er­al sup­ply store in town the day be­fore.

“Feel na­ked?” Cook asked with a sup­pressed laugh.

Kris grumbled un­der his breath. “Something like that.”

“I’ll try to save you some cob­bler,” Cook said as they walked out of the par­lor room. “But no prom­ises. The girls were in­hal­ing it the last time I was in there.”

Kris muttered his thanks and watched Cook head in­to the kit­chen. Though he felt vul­ner­able and crotchety, Kris smiled at the sight of Al­lis­on and Megan hold­ing hands as they sat across from each oth­er at the ta­ble and chattered.

“Oh, stop,” Megan was say­ing as Kris listened in. “Cob­bler is not an aph­ro­dis­i­ac!”

Cook hal­ted and stared curi­ously at the pair be­fore Al­lis­on glanced up at him. “We’re not go­ing to do it on the ta­ble, man. Chill.”

Chuck­ling, Cook shook his head. “I didn’t say I wanted to watch,” he poin­ted out as he got a plate.

“Your mouth didn’t, but everything else is scream­ing for some les­bi­an love,” Al­lis­on shot back witch a chuckle of her own.

“He prob­ably wants us to use the whipped cream,” Megan said and wrinkled her nose in dis­gust.

“There’s whipped cream?!” Al­lis­on and Cook said in near-uni­son, both sound­ing ex­cited at this pro­spect.

Megan glanced between them. “To eat!” she said in ex­as­per­a­tion.

Kris smiled as he turned away from the kit­chen. It was good to know that at least some of his co-fu­git­ives were happy to be around each oth­er. Adam had more or less told Kris to stay away from him on the same night they’d ar­rived at the hide­away. Kris had been keep­ing to him­self ever since.

Breath­ing a heavy sigh, Kris’ smile fell as he made his way out of the back storm door and onto the porch. Matt was sit­ting in a rock­ing chair that was identic­al to the one Kris had slept in, with his feet propped up on the porch rail­ing. He was quietly singing snatches of an Ot­is Red­ding song to him­self be­fore sud­denly flail­ing his hands in the air as he dragged out a note.

Kris’ brow rose. “Have you seen Adam?”

Matt put an ab­rupt halt to his per­son­al per­form­ance and glanced at Kris. “Took you long enough,” he said. “I’ve had to deal with doom and gloom for two days.”

“What happened?” Kris asked in con­cern.

Matt rolled his eyes. “Al­lis­on won’t tell him what she sees in his fu­ture so he thinks it must be bad.”

“If it’s bad, why wouldn’t she tell him?”

“Ding, ding, ding!” Matt said quickly with a slow clap. “Johnny, tell him what he’s won!”

“Do you know where he is?” Kris asked, the ex­haus­tion mak­ing him snippy.

“I don’t think he wants to talk to you,” Matt said poin­tedly be­fore ges­tur­ing to­ward the trees at the edge of the small back­yard. “But he wanted to go for a walk down the path. I told him not to go very far. You already know what happened last time.”

“Mhm,” Kris mur­mured with a nod as he ex­ited the porch. “Thanks.”

“Don’t men­tion it,” Matt replied as he shif­ted and lounged in his seat. “And give him a kiss or something!” he called out as Kris star­ted across the yard. “He could use it!”

Kris paused to shoot a tired look over his shoulder be­fore he con­tin­ued to trudge to­ward the trees. He had no plans for kiss­ing or any­thing ro­mantic. All Kris wanted was to tell Adam that he be­lieved Adam was telling the truth and that he was sorry for all the trouble his ini­tial dis­be­lief had caused.

Cross­ing in­to the forest, Kris pushed past some brush and glanced around. He had no idea how he was go­ing to find Adam. The trees were dense and the un­der­growth was out of con­trol. It would be easy to get lost, so he tried to make a straight path as he slowly walked and stumbled through the trees.

A bird startled Kris as it squawked and flew over his head, mak­ing him duck. He glanced back over his shoulder and no­ticed that he couldn’t see the back yard any­more. He frowned, de­cid­ing that Adam had gone too far from the house and would need to be brought back im­me­di­ately so the Sniffs didn’t have a chance to catch on.

Kris sud­denly came face-to-chest with an­oth­er per­son as he turned around. Giv­ing a startled shout, he re­treated a couple steps and stumbled over a tree root. Wav­ing his hands, Kris bal­anced him­self by put­ting a hand to a tree and frowned. “You scared the crap out of me,” he said to Adam be­fore swal­low­ing over the ra­cing heart­beat in his throat. “Are you a ninja or something?”

“What do you want?” Adam asked in an­noy­ance.

Kris sighed as he calmed down and took a step for­ward, leav­ing the tree. “To talk,” he replied. “And I need you to listen.”

“So,” Adam star­ted slowly, “you want me to play dumb and pre­tend I’m happy to be here?”

“I just want us to be okay,” Kris said truth­fully. “We’re all go­ing to have to trust each oth­er for this to work.”

“You’re really un­der­es­tim­at­ing my in­tel­li­gence if you think that one is go­ing to fly,” Adam replied with a cyn­ic­al chuckle be­fore he star­ted off in­to the forest.

Kris frowned and fol­lowed. “Adam, I be­lieve you,” he said flatly, which made Adam stall. “I think your mom had good reas­on to run away and I think you killed that Agent be­cause you had no oth­er choice.”

Adam looked miffed when he turned around and eyed Kris. “You found her file?” he asked as he searched Kris’ face.

“No. We couldn’t get to them.”

Adam’s brow fur­rowed. “Then why do you think what I said is true?”

“I be­lieve _you_ ,” Kris replied in a firm voice.

“Yeah, right,” Adam said, slow and sar­cast­ic.

“Di­vi­sion did noth­ing but lie to me,” Kris con­tin­ued with a shake of his head. “I was so wrapped up in the job that I crim­in­al­ized everything you said.”

Adam looked agit­ated, now. “So, what made you change your mind?”

“When I went back over the files, your case irked me. It was too clean and there was an an­swer for everything. I wanted to know more.” Kris sighed and scratched at his hair. “I star­ted dig­ging and they turned on me. That’s when I knew you wer­en’t ly­ing to me.”

Adam rolled his eyes. “And I should kiss the ground you walk upon be­cause then you came and res­cued me,” he said bit­terly.

“No,” Kris said cau­tiously. “That was ac­tu­ally Cook’s idea. I didn’t even know they were go­ing to send you to Hong Kong un­til he told me.”

Adam stared. “Hong Kong?” he re­peated.

“Yeah. That’s where Di­vi­sion—”

“I know, Kris,” Adam in­ter­rup­ted moodily. “I would have been screwed if they sent me there.” He eyed Kris skep­tic­ally. “But what I still don’t un­der­stand is why you went along with this. Why risk your ca­reer to save me?”

Kris dropped his gaze. “I wasn’t do­ing any­thing noble,” he said with a slight shrug. “They were go­ing to wipe me. Cook saved us all, really.”

“But you still went along with it,” Adam poin­ted out after a pause. “We wouldn’t be stand­ing here if you hadn’t helped.”

Kris felt his in­sides squirm. That’s not really how he thought of the res­cue. Cook was the hero. He’d just been along for the ride. “If you’re look­ing for your sa­vior, it’s not me,” Kris said quietly.

Adam took a step closer, which made Kris glance up to see that the guarded look had re­ceded from Adam’s eyes. “That’s not what I’m look­ing for out here.”

Kris blinked and tilted his head in curi­os­ity. “Matt said you were just go­ing for a walk.”

“I don’t tell Matt everything,” Adam said with a shake of his head. “He wor­ries too much.”

That made Kris frown. He didn’t un­der­stand what Adam was hint­ing, or if Adam even meant to be hint­ing. “He said that Al­lis­on wouldn’t tell you what she saw and it up­set you.”

“I neg­lected to men­tion to him that she wouldn’t tell me be­cause it in­volved someone in that house.”

Kris eyes widened. Did he mean… “Me?”

“I don’t know,” Adam said with a shrug. “She wouldn’t say. That’s why I’m up­set, but it’s not why I went for a walk.”

Adam was get­ting closer, which made Kris start to feel flustered. “Why did you go for a walk?”

“To find peace,” Adam said softly as he took Kris’ hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

Kris swal­lowed roughly as his heart­beat leaped in­to his throat. “I wish I could give you that,” he replied out of com­pas­sion.

Re­leas­ing Kris’s hand, Adam sighed. “I’ve been think­ing…” he began, but trailed off.

“Yeah?” Kris promp­ted.

“My mom told me to al­ways run. She said I could nev­er stop them from hunt­ing me,” Adam began, sound­ing con­flic­ted, pained even. “But what if—what if I stopped run­ning?” he stammered. “What if I made their lives as much of a liv­ing hell as they’ve done to me?”

Kris blinked slowly. “I don’t un­der­stand what you’re say­ing. You want to go back to Chica­go? After everything we just went through to get out?”

“Yes,” Adam said sin­cerely. “I want to make them pay.”

“How?” Kris asked cau­tiously.

Adam shrugged. “I was think­ing that break­out could have been more suc­cess­ful. Not every­one de­tained by Di­vi­sion is a crim­in­al. I think you know that now.”

Frown­ing, Kris con­sidered this sug­ges­tion care­fully. Adam was ba­sic­ally pro­pos­ing a sui­cide mis­sion.

“We won’t be able to do this alone,” Kris poin­ted out. “It’s go­ing to take a lot of plan­ning and man power.”

“I nev­er said ‘we,’” Adam in­ter­jec­ted with a moody look. “I’ll go by my­self if no one else will.”

Adam star­ted to turn away, but Kris caught him by the arm. “You ser­i­ously think I would let you go alone? You think any of us would let you go alone? You’re crazy.”

“I was kind of hop­ing you wouldn’t,” Adam said with an ap­pre­ci­at­ive smile. He then sighed. “It’s not something I want to do right away. I know we need to plan.” Squint­ing, he glanced up in­to the trees. “And I still need to find peace, if it even ex­ists out here.”

“I’ll go if you want to keep look­ing,” Kris offered. “But let me know what it feels like when you do find it.”

“Why?” Adam asked, hold­ing Kris’ gaze as he took Kris’ hand for an­oth­er squeeze, tight­er than be­fore.

Kris squeezed back. “Be­cause I want to find it, too.”

“You do look ex­hausted,” Adam poin­ted out as a ghost of con­cern crossed his face. “Maybe you should get some sleep and we’ll look to­geth­er, to­mor­row.”

“Really?” Kris promp­ted and Adam nod­ded be­fore smil­ing. Kris ducked his head be­fore look­ing up with a shy smile of his own. “Sounds great.”

Adam grinned and laced their fin­gers as they began the walk back to the house. Kris went along with it for a few yards be­fore he paused and his smile faltered.

“Wait. Adam, wait,” Kris said with a soft sigh. Adam turned and raised an eye­brow as a troubled look crossed Kris’s face. “It still doesn’t feel right. I don’t even know where to be­gin to apo­lo­gize for everything else.”

Adam frowned slightly. “Kris, I’m aware that flirt­ing and sex aren’t in your job de­scrip­tion. If you had been do­ing your job, I would have been caught be­fore we even made it to the apart­ment build­ing.”

“So, we’re okay?” Kris asked, sound­ing more earn­est than he liked. “You don’t hate me?”

“Not any­more,” Adam replied with a slow shake of his head.

Kris poin­ted. “But you did. I knew you did. I was wait­ing for you to make me go jump off the roof.”

Adam laughed, full and from the gut. Kris’ senses buzzed in de­light. It was the first time he’d hear Adam laugh like that and he knew he could stand to hear it some more.

“You know,” Adam began thought­fully as he stepped for­ward to tilt Kris’ face with up his hands. “I think I might have just found something.”

Feel­ing him­self start­ing to get con­fused, Kris stared in­tently at Adam. “What did you find?”

Adam’s hands slipped down to hold Kris’s throat and squeezed gently be­fore mas­sa­ging his tired shoulders. “Peace,” Adam said with a smile. “Or at the very least, an easy feel­ing.”

There was a pang of want in Kris’s chest and his throat bobbed as he swal­lowed softly. “What does it feel like?” he asked quietly.

Kris’ eye­lids be­came heavy as Adam im­me­di­ately leaned in and made Kris’s heart pound. Adam paused teas­ingly be­fore gently press­ing his closed lips against Kris’s par­ted ones. He slipped his arms around Kris and pulled him closer be­fore he re­af­firmed the sweet kiss with an­oth­er more de­mand­ing one that took Kris’ breath away.

Tip-toe­ing for­ward, Kris pushed up as he gripped Adam’s back. He was slowly lulled in­to the in­tens­ity of the mo­ment as Adam pulled kiss after kiss from his lips. Adam paused to nuzzle Kris’ face and then deepened the kiss fur­ther. Kris let out a quiet groan when Adam bit down on his lower lip, pulling it gently be­fore let­ting it snap back, swollen and throb­bing.

“Peace feels pretty awe­some,” Kris prac­tic­ally hummed as he mumbled. He felt bur­dens lift­ing from his shoulders and real­ized he really, really needed to sleep. “Can we find it again, to­mor­row? I think I need a little more peace be­fore we go after them. Can the bad guys wait while we find a bed? Peace and a bed would be a really good idea, right now,” he slowly drawled as he lowered his feet back to the ground. Kris gave that slow smirk as he uttered these words. He already knew what Adam liked.

Adam shif­ted his hold so that most of Kris’ weight was against him as he wheeled Kris around to once more start the slow walk back to the house. “So how tired are you then?” Adam asked be­fore he brushed a kiss through Kris’ hair. “Cause I was think­ing we could maybe be tired to­geth­er for a few hours or ten.”

Kris nod­ded and snuggled his face against Adam’s chest as he stumbled slightly on the path with Adam as his crutch and guide. “Find­ing peace is ex­haust­ing,” he huffed. “And I think I could do with at least twelve hours of be­ing tired with you,” he ad­ded with a slow grin.

Adam’s laugh was soft and made Kris smile grow even big­ger. Kris knew they were still in danger from Di­vi­sion, and that they had to stay vi­gil­ant. Danger and more chases would be forth­com­ing in their lives, but he was too con­tent in that mo­ment to let the worry over­take him. Oddly enough, he felt re­solved and _peace­ful_ as they neared the house. He ac­tu­ally de­cided that an­oth­er break­out and a chase where they had each oth­er’s back might even be ex­cit­ing.

An ad­ven­ture, an hon­or­able cause, and cob­bler. How could it get any bet­ter than that? Ser­i­ously, if there was still cob­bler left, he’d be in heav­en.

**Author's Note:**

> This story was originally started for the 2010 round of ~kradambigbang and completed for the 2011 round. The title was something I tentatively stuck on the story. I ended up keeping it because I couldn’t come up with something better in time for the artist’s work. Typically, I use song lyrics as titles, so, if it could be titled anything else, it would be anything from one of the songs included in the story’s soundtrack.
> 
> As for other credits, I would like to thank my fabulous betas from last year (~nannerz2cool and ~trueroyalty) who helped nurture the initial idea of the story and edited along the way until I came to standstill last August and never finished. Thanks to ~murderaidx for making some AMAZING art that managed to capture the story perfectly when all she had to go on was the first 8k words or so. ~poppetawoppet also needs to be thanked for her unending resolve to make me finish this story. Seriously, I have been getting “finish your big bang” @replies for the past year and look, it’s actually done! Finally, thanks to ~trueroyalty for helping with beta-ing the second half of the story and to ~dansetheblues for being my freaking savior. This story would not be worth the read if not for her help. Her awesome beta skillz made me turn out something that I’m proud to put my name upon.
> 
> If you’re still reading, I hope you enjoy this story as much as I do. I’m not sure if I will ever be able to achieve something of this proportion again, but one can dream. Kris and Adam are my favorite OTP, after all.


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